This isn’t incrediby recent news, and I’m fairly certain I learned about it a while ago, but apparently PATH, operated and owed by the Port Authority, contracted Kawasaki to build 340 new rail cars to be designated the PA5s. The PA5s strangely enough look like the unholy lovechild of MBTA’s new 700 series on the Blue Line and the MTA’s R142/R160 series.
The MBTA 700 Series
The PATH PA5
The MTA R160
The Wikipedia article on PATH indicates that the PA5’s design similarity to the R142/R160s is no coincidence. Aside from both being built by Kawasaki, the heavy rail builder took the R142 design (the basis for the R143 and R160) and essentially modified and updated it for the PA5.
The PA5s one-up even the R160s with 4 sets of 2 LCDs in each car, financed by NBC Universal. These function in much the same way the LCD component on the FIND, but on steroids. Advertising agency JCDecaux has been brought in by the Port Authority to manage advertising on these screens, which will initially pump out NBC news, adverts, and the like, in addition to helpful wayfinding and train status information. The on-board LED displays are even higher resolution, and thus more legible from a distance, than those in the R160, let alone the LIRR’s barely legible M-7 internal displays.
The Wikipedia article on the MBTA Blue Line also seems to indicate a relation between the designs of the PATH trains and Blue Line trains. Older the older PA3 was actually the basis for the older 0600 series on the Blue Line. The PA3’s design was just a carrythrough of the original PA1, built by St. Louis Car Company, a significant builder of NYC rollingstock for years until Budd, and ultimately Bombardier, Alstom, and Kawasaki came onto the scene. (You can very clearly see the progression of manufacturers over the decades in the manufacturers of PATH’s rollingstock.)
In any case, both the Blue Line and PATH rollingstock have shared lineage and you can see the clear influences in the units Bombardier (then Hawker Siddeley Canada Car and Foundry) made for the MBTA’s Blue and Orange Lines and the new Blue Line units by Seimens. The new PA5s have more R142/R143/R160 (built by Bombardier, Alstom, and Kawasaki) than they do PA3 in terms of design, but you can still find hints of its lineage in small details.
With all this crossbreeding, mostly due to the mix of all three major manufacturer’s significant involvement in transit orders lately, I wonder if we’ll ever see a unified, standardized transit system that could possibly come out of a merging of the transit systems that serve the eastern seaboard. While this comes with many dangers (the MTA still suffers from the poorly executed merger of the three original systems), the seeds of interoperability have already been sewn, what with how the three cities of Boston, Washington, D.C., and New York share workers and residents with each other. I long for the day I can use my MetroCard/Charlie Card on all three systems.
Speaking of new trains, the D.C. Metro will be ordering new trains which will be designated as the 7000 series. I’ll leave you with this poignant image of a consist of R160Bs next to a consist of R40 slants, the very cars the R160A/Bs will be replacing. America, welcome to your new transit future.
'Your days are numbered, buddy...'