New SEPTA Metro Cars to be Built by Hitachi

Philadelphia, PA Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, aka SEPTA, has announced earlier this week that Hitachi Rail STS will be building new Metro cars on SEPTA’s heaviest line. This is a base $724.3 million contract for 200 rail cars, with potential for an additional 40 cars. The pilot set of this order is due in 2029, while the remainder of the fleet should arrive through 2031.

Earlier in the year, SEPTA had laid out the 5-year plan for the system, which included several fleet upgrades. With these fleet upgrades were the replacements of the ADTranz Class M4 cars that have been aging horribly since at least 2019. In February of this year, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) awarded SEPTA a $317 Million grant to replace the M4 cars.

Hitachi Rail STS is not an unfamiliar name on the eastern United States, especially on the subway car front. Hitachi has built rail cars for Miami-Dade Transit’s metro, and is in the process of building WMATA’s new 8000 series cars, as well as new cars MTA Maryland “Metro SubwayLink”. With SEPTA’s new order, this would be the 4th order of Metro/subway cars to be built by Hitachi on the east coast. So much so that they have recently opened a new factory in Maryland to keep up with demand.

The Market-Frankford Line, or Line is the single heaviest line in the entire SEPTA system, with over 24 million riders in 2023. At peak, the uses about 160 cars, but ridership demand exceeds the number of available cars.

The line currently uses ADtranz class M4 cars, built by ADTranz group (ABB and Daimler) between 1995 and 1999. When these cars were first delivered, they represented what SEPTA called “The New SEPTA”. These cars were the first SEPTA rail cars delivered with automatic stop announcements, but they also introduced a new “camera” system for the line to allow for operators to see passengers outside of the train at all stops, regardless of which side of the train the platforms were on (as these cars had half-width cabs which would be on the right side of the train). The ADTranz class M4 cars are presently the youngest cars operating for the SEPTA Metro system, being only 24-29 years old. For context, the Montgomery County Line uses cars that are over 30 years old, the Broad Street , Delaware County , and Tunnel Lines use cars that are over 40 years old, and the Girard Avenue Line uses cars nearly 80 years old.

So why, despite all these improvements, and the fact that the M4s are the newest Metro cars, are the M4s being replaced so soon? Well despite all that we’ve said, the problem is that these cars were plagued with “invisible” problems that have made themselves more and more obvious over the years. Upon delivery, these cars would have many issues from stuck doors, to the fact that they were severely overweight. Over time, the overweight issue would destroy the original wheels, which drove them to be replaced several times through their life. Right before the pandemic, several cars were pulled from service that have since retired and can longer run.

These new Hitachi rail cars will greatly improve service on the Market-Frankford Line, as well as the quality of life on the system. For more details on what this will entail, check out the official release from SEPTA here: https://wwww.septa.org/news/septa-board-awards-contract-for-purchase-of-new-market-frankford-line-fleet/

About the author: Dash

I have been with Virtual Transit Center since it's conception as the "Dash Forums" back in 2008. Since then, I have been writing and doing YouTube side by side, focusing both on Transportation and Gaming. Most of my knowledge comes from SEPTA as I lived in Philadelphia for most of my life. As of 2021, I am on YouTube as DashTransit, Dash5155, and TheDashOfficial.

As for the name DashTransit itself, it actually stems from my YouTube channel.

DashTransit was originally called "njt5329" and the channel was just clips of buses. Mostly SEPTA and NJT. A Fujifilm Finepix was used in this era.

Starting in July 2011, the Canon SX130IS camera became the camera of the channel, bringing HD documentary-style videos much like my buddy (trainman1971) did for DVD for many years past. This is when the channel became known as "Transit Action Series"

In May 2012, the original Canon SX130IS retired, and then all videos were recorded off a mobile phone until eventually uploaded proved too difficult due to hardships IRL

Starting in 2017, I used a Canon SX200IS from Bastranz to reboot the channel that otherwise was dead for a whole year prior.

Between April 19th, 2019, and January 21st, 2021, all videos were recorded by a Canon SX710 HS camera. The channel was renamed DashTransit 4/19/19.