New CTA Cars Yanked From Service

By Marcus Gilmer in News on May 27, 2010 9:40PM

Those shiny new CTA cars that everyone has been getting all worked up about have been temporarily pulled from service. The reason? An issue with the brakes that requires some modifications. While there haven't been any reports of brake failures thus far, part of the system could be affected by vibrations. Per the Sun-Times:

Bombardier, the Pennsylvania manufacturer of the L cars, has been working on a modification tol improve the brakes, according to the CTA, which said the trains haven’t experienced any brake failures but that, under certain conditions a component was found to be affected by vibrations, whch the transit agency said could, over time result in a loss of braking friction.

Once the adjustment is made, the L cars will be tested without passengers before resuming testing again on the Green Line in a few weeks.

Said CTA President Richard Rodriguez, “Testing new rail cars is a long process. We need to be able to evaluate their performance against a number of variables.” The new cars had been carrying passengers for the last week and a half on the Green Line after almost a month carrying passengers on the Red Line.