NCDOT orders CATS to sideline swath of rail cars. What it means for Blue Line service
A portion of the Charlotte Area Transit System’s light rail fleet is out of service, and could be for weeks, under an order issued Saturday by the North Carolina Department of Transportation.
The order, first reported by WFAE, came after an issue with a wheel was detected on one of the fleet’s older trains, interim CATS CEO Brent Cagle told a Charlotte City Council committee Monday. CATS does “not believe this is related to the previously identified issues” that caused a train derailment in 2022, the agency said in a statement.
All of CATS’ 100- and 200-series Lynx Blue Line trains are sidelined, according to the agency’s statement. CATS’ 300-series vehicles, introduced in 2018, will remain in use.
CATS is working to determine the root cause of the wheel issue and perform any necessary maintenance to get the trains back on line, Cagle told the Transportation, Planning and Development Council Committee. That maintenance process can take six to seven weeks, he added, and the trains will need to be “tested in the field” before they can return to service after maintenance is completed.
LYNX Blue Line service should continue on schedule despite the new development, Cagle told the committee.
CATS previously partnered with rail company Siemens Mobility to expedite other repairs ordered by NCDOT in the wake of the 2022 derailment, a process that was expected to take several years. It’s been a tumultuous stretch for Mecklenburg County’s public transportation system, from the derailment to leadership changes and multiple violent incidents.
Charlotte City Council member Ed Driggs, who chairs the transportation committee, called Monday’s development a “dramatic event” but added that he believes the agency’s swift action in this case is a sign things are improving internally at CATS.
“We’ve come a long way from the conditions that you inherited,” he told Cagle.
What triggered CATS trains getting pulled out of service?
The latest series of events began on Dec. 30, Cagle told the committee, when a light rail operator reported a “clicking sound” that can be indicative of a “flat spot” on a wheel. That’s an imperfection about “the depth of a dime.”
The train was taken out of service for maintenance and a test run, then put back into service, according to Cagle. But on Jan. 5, the same issue was reported on the same train, and another flat spot was found.
“In an abundance of caution, (maintenance) really needed to do further investigation to see if there was an additional root cause that was creating it,” Cagle said. “Because while flat spots are not uncommon, it’s not usual to see a new flat spot develop after just five days.”
It was then determined that one of the train’s wheels was “wobbling as it spun.”
NC DOT was notified and issued its order on Saturday.
“There were no indications that this issue was stemming from lack of maintenance or a maintenance issue with the bearing on this vehicle,” Cagle said.
The wobbly wheel phenomenon, known as “excessive play,” has not been found on any of the other wheels inspected in the fleet since the investigation began.
How will CATS train issues affect Blue Line service?
NC DOT’s order presents an “either/or” situation for CATS to get the sidelined trains back on line, Cagle said. The trains must either undergo “maintenance that’s already scheduled” or CATS must “understand the true root cause to the wobble” and “address that separately.”
CATS is working with Siemens to expedite the process by bringing a team of technicians to Charlotte this week for “an initial review.”
In the meantime, CATS has the capacity to maintain a normal LYNX Blue Line schedule, Cagle said.
“To the riding public, the impacts of this will be negligible if not completely non-existent,” he said.
The smaller fleet will mean CATS works with a “very lean” slate of spare train cars, Cagle acknowledged.
“We have 23 vehicles, and we need 20 daily to make service,” he said. “And all of those vehicles, they require routine maintenance and other things as well.”
If enough of the remaining 23 cars were to go down and leave CATS under the 20-vehicle threshold, standard operating procedure is to reduce the number of cars per train.
“So if we found a situation where we had 19 trains available, for example, what we would do is send nine trains out with two cars and one train out with one car. The schedule itself would not be affected,” Cagle said. “Operationally it is completely acceptable.”
How long will CATS trains be out of service?
It takes “approximately five to six weeks” for Siemens to do service on trains, Cagle said.
He added it takes about two weeks for trains to be transported to Siemens’ main maintenance facility in California.
CATS is working with the company to expedite the process by instead sending trains to a Siemens facility in Florida, cutting the transit time “roughly in half.”
Once trains return from maintenance, “they’re tested in the field.”
“NC DOT, Siemens, CATS personnel are all on hand for those physical tests that are conducted really literally live with the equipment, so there are many safety protocols in place,” Cagle said.
