Passenger Transport - 12/01/2017

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The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) recently introduced the first of more than 200 new light rail vehicles being manufactured by Siemens at its Sacramento facility—the company’s largest U.S. light rail car order.

“An incredible amount of work went into making sure these state-of-the-art, once-in-a-generation vehicles are going to work well for Muni riders for many years to come,” said SFMTA Director of Transportation Ed Reiskin.

Michael Cahill, president of Siemens Rolling Stock, said, “Siemens is thrilled to celebrate this important milestone not only with SFMTA and city officials, but also with the more than 700,000 passengers who use San Francisco’s world-class transportation system.” He continued, “We’re excited that these light rail vehicles are not only designed in California, but also produced in California, for Californians.”

The vehicle offers a new seating configuration that provides wider aisles for more capacity, along with better customer signage, quieter cars and improved design. The rollout is ahead of schedule, according to SFMTA: the agency originally planned to have 24 of the new vehicles in service by the end of 2019 but is on schedule to roll out 68 vehicles over the same period of time. Eventually the new trains will expand the size of the fleet by more than 70 percent.