SEPTA puts its new railcar in passenger service

With no fanfare, the first of SEPTA's long-delayed production Silverliner V passenger railcars made their debut Monday.

The two cars were the first of 117 being assembled at a South Philadelphia factory to be placed in revenue service.

Three other Silverliner V's have been in intermittent service since Oct. 29, when SEPTA introduced them to riders with a ceremony, speeches, and a made-for-cameras run through a celebratory paper banner at Suburban Station. But those were "pilot" cars, completely built in South Korea by manufacturer Hyundai Rotem Co.

Monday, when Cars 803 and 804 were coupled to the three pilot cars to form a five-car train running from Lansdale to Center City, it marked the first paying service for any cars assembled at the Hyundai Rotem plant on Weccacoe Street from car shells delivered from South Korea.

Production delays have repeatedly pushed back delivery of the new cars, and SEPTA's general manager, Joseph Casey, apologized to riders this month for the slow pace of the work and the resulting overcrowding on SEPTA's current fleet.

"The manufacturing process has not gone as originally planned," Casey said in a message distributed to riders and posted on the agency's website. "We tried rushing to get the Silverliner V cars into service, but there are too many complex systems that need to be tested and accepted.

"We believe it's more important that things are done correctly now so that the entire new rail fleet will perform at peak levels with a minimum of operational issues."

SEPTA ordered 120 Silverliner V cars from Hyundai Rotem in 2006 for $274 million. The total cost, including spare parts and associated training and management, is $330 million.

Production problems - including material delays, design flaws, labor-management issues, and workmanship problems - have put the delivery of the new cars about a year behind schedule.

Matthew Mitchell of the Delaware Valley Association of Rail Passengers lamented the slow deliveries but said SEPTA was doing the right thing to insist that problems be identified and fixed now.

He said Hyundai Rotem's efforts to get the first production cars delivered took workers and materials away from subsequent cars, further delaying the project.

"It will have a wave effect down the line, and we don't see them making the nine-cars-per-month schedule any time soon," Mitchell said. "It's questionable if they'll ever be able to make that schedule."

The new five-car Silverliner V train is scheduled to be in service on four SEPTA lines this week, operating as Train 501 on the Lansdale and Paoli lines, Train 9530 on the Paoli line, Trains 959 and 3256 on the Elwyn line, and Trains 3256 and 6271 on the Norristown line.

The complete schedule of the Silverliner V service for this week is available on the SEPTA website at http://www.septa.org/service/rail/

The cars will replace 73 Silverliner II and III railcars built in the 1960s. With the retirement of the old cars and the addition of the new ones, SEPTA will have about 400 railcars by next year.