Advisory: Metra Executive Director/CEO Don Orseno will show off the new seats at 11:45 a.m. today at LaSalle St. Station, above LaSalle and Congress.
Metra announced plans to launch into service the first of 30 railcars featuring a new style of seats with armrests, built-in cup holders and better head, neck and lumbar support. Railcar 7437 is the first to be equipped with the new seating and will be put in service this week on the Milwaukee District lines.
Metra plans to add the new seating to two cars per month between now and the end of the year on all Metra lines except the Metra Electric as part of a pilot program. Customers who use the news seats will be asked to provide feedback starting in February.
“These new seats offer amenities our customers have never had before – cup holders, armrests and higher backs,” said Metra Executive Director/CEO Don Orseno. “We will be asking our customers to give us feedback about the new seats, and we hope they like them and find them to be more comfortable than the current seating.”
The new blue-and-gray vinyl seats were purchased last fall after Metra feedback collected from customers indicated that more than half preferred the new seats to the old ones.
The new higher-backed seats are stationary, meaning that depending upon the direction of travel, half of the seats will be backward-facing positions.
Metra is not spending any extra funding on the new seats; they are being installed in cars whose seats need replacement anyway, and rather than replace them with the old bench style we are replacing them with the new style. The new seats cost Metra the same as the older seats, but there are more manufacturers of this style in the rail industry, which is expected to keep the prices competitive and possibly drive down future costs. The new seats are manufactured by Kustom Seating Unlimited of Bellwood.
The new seats are being used on 30 railcars going through Metra’s Amerail car rehabilitation program. The cars are being refurbished in-house, by Metra workers with years of experience, dedication and know-how. Metra has streamlined processes over the past several years to create an ultra-efficient operation that can strip and fully rebuild a car in just 32 days.
The entire Amerail fleet, built between 1995 and 1998, includes 97 railcars and 79 cab cars and is expected to be fully rehabilitated by the end of this year. This work will extend the life of the cars by 12 to 15 years; with future rehabs Metra expects to extend the cars’ life to 50 years of service or more. The work costs about $650,000 in materials and labor per car compared to $2.5 million to $3 million for a new railcar. This represents a savings of about 75 percent.