US Standard Light Rail Vehicle - Problems

Problems

From their earliest days of service, the LRV was prone to numerous problems including, but not limited to;

• Derailments on tight curves, which would seriously damage the car's articulation section, itself problematic as Boeing designed its own articulated section so as to avoid obtaining a license from overseas builders such as Duewag.

• Shorting of electrical systems and premature failures in the car's motors and propulsion system. Boeing used an advanced chopper control system for the cars as insisted by the federal government. While such systems have been implemented successfully in many subway, light rail, and trolley bus systems, the systems installed in Boeing's cars were found to be overly complicated for the transit systems' use.

• The LRVs' overly complex "plug doors," which were intended for the high-platform operation in the Muni Metro subway, would frequently short circuit, and caused much grief for the MBTA. The MBTA later attempted to correct the issues with the plug doors by adding a wider rubber strip, and eliminating the recycling circuit, but ultimately, the issue was not fully resolved until the mid-1990s, when MBTA retrofitted all Boeings with more reliable bi-fold doors.

• Some car shells were shipped to Boeing as deck cargo, exposed to the ocean air, and spent a further amount of time outside the Boeing plant before being assembled and delivered. As a result, these cars' shells had become severely corroded after a mere decade of service.

• The Boston cars' air-conditioning units originally were mounted under the car, and continually sucked in dirt and debris from under the car. The MBTA later modified 76 LRVs with roof-mounted air-conditioning units to address this.

• One of the largest issues was simply that the Boeing LRV was a "compromise" car. Both Boston and San Francisco had very different needs for the LRV: Boston needing a more traditional streetcar, while San Francisco needed a more specialized car for their Muni Metro subway. The San Francisco cars needed stairways for ground-level boarding on the surface parts of their trips, but their stairways needed to convert for high-platform operation in the Muni Metro subway. This became a passenger flow problem since Muni could only use the two center doors on the LRVs in the subway, as the front end of the car curved away from the platforms too much to allow passengers to safely board or alight the cars. The narrow front end was required by Boston so that the LRV could navigate the tight curves in their 1897-vintage subway.

In Boston, the LRV situation was becoming a major political and public relations nightmare, and led to the LRV fleet availability typically being less than 50% of the total number of cars on the property for the first several years of service. The MBTA was still accepting new cars from Boeing-Vertol, but the cars were falling out of service faster than the MBTA's maintenance staff could repair them. Additionally, the MBTA could not acquire replacement parts fast enough to repair the disabled LRVs. In an effort to keep as many LRVs operating as possible, MBTA maintenance crews began cannibalizing some of the disabled cars for replacement parts. To help prevent the riding public from seeing the sheer number of brand-new, but heavily cannibalized LRVs, several of the cars were hidden around the system where the public was not likely to find them. A major newspaper story emerged when a reporter and a photographer managed to get into a section of the Green Line's subway which was not in use at the time, and found it chock-full of cannibalized cars which had been abandoned in the tunnel. The MBTA had been towing the cars into the subway during the middle of the night when the subway was closed to the public. The story and photographs brought the problems with the LRV into the public eye for the first time. After the story broke, out-of-service LRVs began to appear in several storage yards which were easily viewed by the public, though this may have simply been due to the ever-increasing number of disabled cars.

The MBTA instituted a PCC rebuilding program to augment the LRV fleet and maintain Green Line service. In San Francisco, the problems with the LRVs led to the Muni Metro not reaching its full potential until 1982.

In 1979, the MBTA successfully sued Boeing-Vertol for financial damages, the cost of repairs and modifications to several cars, and the ability to reject the delivery of the last 40 cars of their 175-car order. The rejected MBTA units sat in storage at Boeing-Vertol's plant for a short time, until Muni decided to purchase some of them. The first of the "Boston" cars which Muni purchased was to replace one of their LRVs which had been damaged in a mishap, and was deemed beyond economic repair. After the successful conversion of that first car, Muni ordered an additional 30 LRVs from the rejected Boston units to further bolster their fleet. The "Boston" cars in San Francisco were modified to meet the needs of the Muni Metro, but were easily distinguished by the wood grain interior parts at the operator's cab and articulation section, which were in stark contrast to the yellow-ish orange color on the original Muni cars.

In 1983, the last of the LRVs at Boeing-Vertol's facility were finally delivered, when the MBTA took delivery of the remaining nine cars of the group which they had previously rejected. They also took delivery of five cannibalized "shells" of cars which were delivered to the MBTA earlier in the 1970s and subsequently returned to Boeing in 1979.