Breda cars blocked from service in Boston

[Amfleet]

State regulators in late December blocked the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority from bringing its sidelined fleet of derail-prone Green Line trolley cars back into service, saying they want assurances their Italian manufacturer is actively involved in devising the fix.
The Department of Telecommunications and Energy, which has final say on T safety matters, nixed the transit agency’s plan to reintroduce 27 low-floor Breda trolley cars in December saying it needed additional information and at least another month to review the transit agency’s plan, according to a report in Boston’s Daily Herald for December 21.

Full article can be found here.

 

[tp49]

When MUNI in San Francisco introduced their Breda cars a couple of years ago they had a multitude of problems and it seems to take a long time to get any type of response from the company.

 

[AlanB]

I can't really speak about company response times, nor if Cleveland had any problems when they first received their Breda cars. Although I think that they did have some problems.

I can tell you however, that I had the chance to ride the Breda cars two summers ago, in Cleveland. I thought that the cars were quite nice, and provided a pretty nice ride. I covered both Light Rail lines in their entirety, plus one section from downtown to the Amtrak station several times. I was quite pleased by their performance.

In addition thanks to our host and good friend Mike Hammond, those of us who were at the OTOL Clevefest, got a really nice tour of the car shops in Cleveland. The shops service both the Breda low-level light rail vehicles, and Cleveland's heavy rail cars.

An interesting side note is that Cleveland's heavy rail cars (subway style cars) use an overhead catenary system, just like most light rail, as opposed to a typical third rail like most subways. This allows both heavy and light rail trains use the same tracks at the main downtown station, Tower City.

If anyone's interested, you can read the trip report here on Prodigy's On Track On Line. The report includes several photos that I took of the shops, plus our travels.

 

[Metroclub]

Oslo, Norway has a fleet of Breda (now Ansaldobreda ) LRVs which were also delivered late, overweight, noisy and derailment prone. They entered full service years behind schedule.