MTA's new rail-car chief ready to oversee fleet replacement

By Julie Sneider, Senior Editor

Last fall, Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Janno Lieber tapped Tim Mulligan to oversee what is expected to be the largest rolling stock replacement in the century-plus history of the New York authority.

A major priority of the MTA’s $68.4 billion 2025-29 capital plan, the rail-car program calls for procuring 2,000 rail cars for New York City Transit’s (NYCT) subway system, and Metro-North Railroad’s (MNR) and Long Island Rail Road’s (LIRR) commuter-rail networks.

Replacing cars that have reached the end of their 40-year-life span will boost the subway’s and commuter railroads’ on-time performance and improve riders’ overall experience, MTA officials say. The new cars are expected to be six times more reliable than older ones.

Due to the once-in-a-generation nature of the rail-car replacement effort, Lieber chose Mulligan as the MTA’s first-ever chief of rolling stock. Informally dubbed the agency’s “rail-car czar,” Mulligan is expected to bolster the MTA’s position as a buyer to improve pricing, strengthen its purchasing power and support a competitive marketplace for rail-car production and procurement. Mulligan previously was the deputy chief development officer at MTA Construction and Development, where he oversaw the department’s budget and program management needs.

Mulligan brings a career of practicing fiscal responsibility to the new role, MTA officials said when they announced his appointment.

Considering the size of the car replacement program, MTA leaders believe the special role is necessary to respond to changes in the industry, including consolidation among manufacturers and sub-suppliers, as well as the supply-chain disruptions that occurred during the pandemic that the marketplace is still reacting to, Mulligan says.

“There’s also been the shock of higher inflation and the impact that’s had on manufacturers putting together packages for cars,” he adds.

How the MTA addresses inflation and risk-sharing with manufacturers and suppliers will boil down to establishing long-term, reliable partnerships within the industry. Such partnerships will help ensure more predictability in the quantity of rail cars being produced when they’re needed, Mulligan says.

Assessing ownership costs before buying

Mulligan’s office also will examine MTA policies and procedures when acquiring new cars to better understand upfront the total cost of fleet ownership, including energy use, maintenance and inspection, he says.

MTA’s five-year capital plan calls for an order of 1,500 subway cars, replacing about 22% of the entire fleet, and advancing the purchase of more than 500 rail cars for MNR and LIRR.

The MTA plans to launch the effort by replacing the subway cars that were purchased in the 1980s. The new cars will feature wider doors, brighter lighting, more digital signage and security cameras. They will be compatible with modern signaling technology such as communications-based train control systems. Acquiring the new units will enable MTA to start retiring the R68 cars.

Meanwhile, the new MNR and LIRR cars will be fully ADA accessible and feature such amenities as wider seats. Those new units will enable the two railroads to retire all remaining M3 cars and other MNR passenger coaches that were purchased 40 years ago. The MTA is in an active procurement process for the new commuter cars, Mulligan says.

Opting for more cars now

In mid-December, the MTA approved an option to purchase an additional 435 R211 subway cars. In January 2018, MTA awarded the contract to Kawasaki Rail Car Inc. to design, build and deliver 535 subway cars, including 440 closed-end cars (R211A), 20 open-gangway subway cars (R211T) and 75 cars for Staten Island Railway.

That contract included two options: The first, for 640 cars, which was exercised in October 2022 for $1.78 billion; and the second that was approved in December 2024 for 355 closed-end cars and 80 open-gangway subway cars at a price of $1.27 billion.

That second option will bring the total number of R211s ordered from Kawasaki to 1,610. The cars in this latest order are expected to be delivered starting in 2027, according to the MTA. Currently, there are 345 R211 cars in service throughout NYCT’s system.

The order advances the MTA toward its goal of fully modernizing the subway system, according to Mulligan.

“The R211s are state of the art and less prone to breakdowns, which means smoother trips for New Yorkers and more reliable service for decades to come,” he said in a Dec.16 press release.

The R211s eventually will replace all R44s on the Staten Island Railway and the current fleet of R46 subway cars. The option also will enable NYCT to begin replacing the R68s, which entered service in the mid-1980s.

The R211 has an average mean distance between failure (MDBF) rate of about 220,000 miles compared to the R46’s 46,000 miles, MTA officials said. The MDBF is a measure of how far a rail car can travel before a mechanical problem occurs that requires repair.

One reason MTA has such a big need for new cars today is because the initial capital plan created in the early 1980s addressed the lack of car reliability. At the time, MTA leaders were pursuing a plan to rebuild the city’s subway, bus and commuter-rail systems after years of neglect.

“Back in the day, when the system was in bad shape, [the MTA] was running MBDF at a fraction of what we are running now,” says Mulligan. “But those [replacement] cars made in the 1980s are now due for replacement, and that’s why we have the quantity of new cars to take on in the coming years.”