New SEPTA rail cars to have maiden run in Philadelphia

The first of SEPTA's long-awaited Silverliner V railcars will roll into service Friday with a celebratory morning commute into Center City.

A train of three new cars is scheduled to arrive at Suburban Station shortly before 9:30 a.m., with the first paying customers aboard.

SEPTA officials will celebrate the completion of the first paying trip with a ceremony at Track 0 at Suburban Station at 9:30.

The three cars are the first of 120 ordered by SEPTA, at a cost of $274 million.

Legal disputes and production delays have held up delivery of the Silverliner V's, which will replace 73 railcars built in the 1960s. All of the new cars, built in South Korea and finished at a plant in South Philadelphia, are now supposed to be in service by the middle of 2011.

The contract for the Silverliner V's was first awarded in 2004, thrown out because of competitors' complaints, and awarded again in 2006.

The new cars, with state-of-the-art air-conditioning and heating systems and wide mid-car doors to speed boarding, are being built by United Transit Systems, a consortium of Hyundai-Rotem Co. of South Korea and Sojitz Corp. of America, a U.S. subsidiary of Sojitz Corp. of Japan.

The new cars will have about 12 fewer seats than their 120-seat predecessors because of fewer three-across seats, wider doorways, and wheelchair areas.

SEPTA is training engineers and conductors to operate the cars, and the transit agency continues to work with the manufacturer to fix production problems.

Inexperienced workers, late material shipments, and poor workmanship have caused delays at the South Philadelphia factory.

The manufacturer has hired additional workers locally and brought more employees in from its plant in Changwon, South Korea, to try to speed production.

At the South Korea plant, where the car shells are built and partially equipped, work has been slowed by the need to repair rust damage on 10 cars.

Each finished car is expected to weigh about 146,600 pounds, instead of 137,000 pounds.

The extra weight remains within the design parameters of the cars and should not create problems with operation or maintenance, said David Casper, SEPTA's director of new-vehicle procurement.

United Transit, the manufacturer, is liable for penalties of $200 for each day each car is late.