R211 (New York City Subway car)

The R211 is a class of New Technology Train (NTT) subway cars built for the New York City Transit Authority. Being built by Kawasaki Railcar Manufacturing for the B Division of the New York City Subway and for the Staten Island Railway (SIR), they will replace aging subway car models: all R44 cars on the SIR, plus all R46 and some R68 subway cars. It contain features such as wider doors, information displays, and LED-lit doorways. The order is split into three parts: R211A and R211T cars for the subway and R211S cars for the SIR. The R211Ts employ open gangways between cars, allowing passengers to see and walk between multiple cars – a feature not present on the subway's other rolling stock.

Planning for the R211 order started in 2011, with the design process starting in 2012. The request for proposal was solicited in July 2016, with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) awarding a contract to Kawasaki in January 2018. Delivery of the pilot cars began at the end of June 2021. The R211As entered service on March 10, 2023, beginning a 30-day acceptance test on the . Following a successful revenue service test, it officially entered service with the first production set on June 29, 2023. The open gangway R211T test trains entered service on February 1, 2024, on the , while the first R211S train entered service on the SIR on October 8, 2024.

Component orders With all options exercised, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) plans to spend at least $3.686 billion in the order. The contract is split into three parts: R211A, R211S, and R211T. The majority of the 535-car base order will comprise 440 R211A cars that will partially replace the aging 748-car R46 fleet. There are also 20 R211T open gangway prototype cars, first delivered in late 2022, and 75 R211S cars that replaced the now year old remaining 61-car R44 fleet on the Staten Island Railway. The R44s and R46s are long, and the R211s are only . As a result, the 752 R46s would need to be replaced by 940 R211s. In September 2024, the MTA indicated the possibility of retiring a handful of R68 and R68A cars with R211s, and in December, it was confirmed that some R68s would be replaced by the second option order.

There will be two options for additional cars: the first comprises 640 R211A cars, and the second comprises 355 R211A cars and 80 R211T cars for a total of 1,610 cars including the base order. Any cars from the option orders that do not replace existing rolling stock will be used to expand the system's fleet.

The R211 order was expected to provide 1,015 new cars to replace the existing fleet, as well as up to 597 cars for fleet expansions following the extension of the Second Avenue Subway and the automation of the New York City Subway. The R211Ts would also increase capacity and allow passengers to walk seamlessly from one car to the next.

, the R211As and R211Ts are based out of Pitkin Yard and Coney Island Yard, and the R211Ses are based out of Clifton Yard. For the subway fleet, the R211As are assigned to the , , , , , and Rockaway Park Shuttle, and the R211Ts are assigned to the .

Features

On the exterior, the cars have a blue front with large windows, LED headlights, and a blue stripe with gold accents on the sides. To designate the route, a large LED screen with the route bullet is displayed at the ends of the train, while the route's destination is displayed above the door on the front. On the sides, there is a screen that displays both the route bullet and the route's destination.

The doors on the R211s are wide, compared to current MTA standard of , thereby projected to reduce station dwell time by 25 to 30 percent. This door width will also promote accessibility on the cars, making them the first fully accessible subway car in New York City. This design change partially incorporates a design feature of the R110A prototype subway cars, which had doors that are wide. Flanking each set of doors are lights, which illuminate to indicate on which side of the train the doors would open. There are twelve lights around each set of doors. These lights turn green when the doors open at each station and turn red when the doors are closing.

Interior features

Antenna Design New York designed the interiors of the R211s. Most of the seating on the inside is blue, though yellow flip seats are installed to allow space for wheelchairs. In contrast to older subway car models with L-shaped seating (like the R46 and R68), in which some seats are placed perpendicularly to the windows, the R211s' seats all face away from the windows. Designers at Antenna used gold seats to indicate priority seats for disabled and senior passengers, as riders often ignored priority-seating signs in older rolling stock models. There are also looped stanchions, a feature found in some R46, R62A, and R160 cars, as well as on all R179 cars. On the floors are decals with arrows indicating that passengers should move into the center of the car.

The R211s have white ceilings and walls to give the impression of a spacious interior, as well as LED lighting, which are angled to disperse the light throughout the car. The cars have digital advertisements, digital customer information displays, illuminated door opening alerts, and security cameras, unlike the older New Technology Trains, which lack these features.

There are 28 display screens inside each car, including updated digital displays over doors. The overhead screens display additional information, such as specific bus transfers, elevator locations, and which car the customer is located in. The screens on the walls display advertisements, public service announcements, notices, and subway maps.

Open-gangway trains It was announced in July 2016 that some of the cars would have open gangways, allowing passengers to see and walk through the entire length of the train. These cars, which are designated as R211T, are the first contemporary trainsets to have full-open gangways in New York, and the first open gangway cars in the system since the introduction of the BMT D-type Triplex in 1925, the MS Multi-section cars in 1934, and the Bluebird Compartment Cars in 1939. Similar open gangway designs are used in major cities such as Toronto (Toronto Rocket), London (S Stock) and Paris (MF 88 onwards). The open gangways also help prevent subway surfing, as subway surfers can no longer climb between cars to reach the train's roof, as was possible on older trains and the R211As.

The prototype cars consist of two designs. Two of the five-car sets utilize interior panels in the gangway connection ("hard shell"), and the other two five-car sets use interior bellows in the gangway connection ("soft shell"). Ultimately, the hard shell was chosen for the second option order, which will include 80 cars of the type.

Mechanical and signaling systems The cars use Alstom's OPTONIX propulsion system. Each car contains an on-board computer system that could detect breakdowns in critical systems such as braking and door-opening.

All R211A and R211T cars are equipped for communications-based train control (CBTC) in conjunction with the ongoing automation of B Division lines. They are also being retrofitted with 5G radios that would work with the CBTC signaling system. All R211S cars are equipped with pulse code cab signaling. History Initial request for proposal The R211 Design Master Plan was approved by the MTA in December 2011, and design planning began in December 2012. An R211 solicitation was posted in the classified section of Metro Magazine'''s May 9, 2013, issue, stating the proposal to acquire these cars in the near future. At the time, the order was planned to be in length, the same length as the R46 and R68 cars. Open-gangways, which would allow passengers to seamlessly walk throughout the train or units, and other alternate configurations were also initially considered for the entire order.

By the release of the MTA's 2015–2019 Capital Program in October 2015, the order specified cars, which has been the standard length of new B Division cars since the R143 order. , open-gangways will be tested on ten cars (now designated as the R211T). Additionally, the order was broken up into a base order of 565 R211A cars and two option orders: the first for 375 R211A cars, and a second for up to 520 R211As.

The request for proposal (RFP) was issued on July 22, 2016, and the contract was to be put out for bidding. With the RFP, the breakup of the order was changed. The base order consisted of 285 cars, with 10 R211T cars, 75 R211S cars, and 200 R211A cars. There were still two option orders; the first option order contained 740 cars (either R211As or R211Ts, depending on the success of the R211Ts in the base order), and the second base order contained 520 cars. The RFP closed in December 2016, and the contract was expected to be awarded in early 2017, at which time the existing R46 fleet would be 42 years old, making the oldest cars years old, in . However, in January 2017, the contract was pushed back to mid-2017.

The breakdown of the order was changed once again at the New York City Transit committee meeting on April 24, 2017. The base order now included 535 cars (an increase of 250 cars), with 10 R211T cars, 75 R211S cars, and 450 R211A cars. The option order now consisted of between 490 and 640 R211 cars. This change was made to allow for faster deliveries of the R211 cars. The R211As, with their standard configuration, would be delivered in 2021, earlier than the open-gangway R211T cars, which would not be delivered until at least 2023.

Contract

Creation of mockup and contract award

In May 2017, the MTA quietly built a mockup of the R211 in a sparsely-used section of the 34th Street–Hudson Yards station's mezzanine, hidden behind a construction wall. The New York Daily News'' first reported on the mockup's existence in September of that year. The mockup contains features such as the open-gangway designs, digital screens showing next stops and their station layouts, multicolor lights next to the doors to indicate which set of doors will open, and a blue-and-gold-stripe paint design on its exterior. The model was completed and was made publicly accessible from November 30 to December 6, 2017, so riders could review it.

In August 2017, Bombardier Transportation, who was manufacturing the R179s at the time, was banned from bidding on the R211 contract due to various delays and problems associated with the R179 contract. Shortly afterward, it was reported that CRRC had also opted out of contention for the R211 contract, leaving Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Alstom Transport as two of the likely bidders for the contract.

On January 19, 2018, the MTA Board suggested that Kawasaki Rail Car, Inc, a subsidiary of Kawasaki Heavy Industries of Kobe, Japan, be awarded the $1.4 billion base order for the first 535 new R211 cars. The cars were anticipated to be delivered from 2020 to 2023, with the option orders to be delivered by 2025. The R211 base order includes 20 R211T cars with open gangways; 75 R211S cars for the Staten Island Railway, to be delivered near the end of the base order; and 440 R211A cars similar to the R143/R160 series. All cars in the base order will operate in five-car units. The first test train was then expected to be delivered in July 2020, with the production cars being delivered between 2021 and 2023. The R211A/T cars are being assembled at Kawasaki's factories in the U.S. at Lincoln, Nebraska, while the R211S cars are being assembled at Yonkers, New York. In October 2019, the MTA Board ratified a contract with Thales Group (since acquired by Hitachi Rail) for the installation of CBTC equipment in 92 five-car R211 sets.

Option orders