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For the C Train’s Rickety and Rackety Cars, Retirement Will Have to Wait


Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/26/ny...1&ref=nyregion

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The cars on the C line are not only the oldest in the New York subway: They also rank among the oldest city subway trains still in regular operation anywhere in the world. And they are not leaving anytime soon. Like an employer pushing back a valued worker’s retirement, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has responded to budget problems by extending the lives of the C cars, known by their model number as R32s. The cars will now run through at least 2017, when they will be 53 years old, well past the tenure envisioned upon their gleaming debut during the Johnson administration in 1964.

To be sure, there is Buenos Aires, with its fleet of 100-year-old wooden subway cars still rattling on. (Local preservation groups have held up plans for replacements.) And the London tube has its creaky Metropolitan Line, whose 51-year-old trains are just now being replaced. But many major metro systems, including those in Boston and Paris, have phased out most of their elderly trains, leaving New York at the forefront of the subway senior citizens club. In a modern city that prides itself on Bloombergian efficiency, the C is a throwback, said Gene Russianoff, staff lawyer at the Straphangers’ Campaign, the riders’ group. “It is a grim reminder of what the past looked like.”

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