STAMFORD -- The state's decision to order 25 additional M-8 rail cars will result in Metro-North Railroad’s New Haven Line having an entirely new fleet by 2015, according to acting Commissioner of Transportation James P. Redeker.

Redeker made the announcement Wednesday night during the Connecticut Rail Commuter Council’s August meeting in Government Center.

Redeker said the decision to order the additional cars was made following an evaluation by Metro-North Railroad whether it was practical to refurbish the line's existing M-4 and M-6 cars. (It was already intended that all of the line’s aged M-2 cars would be scrapped after the M-8s came into service.)

“We have been in a dilemma of what to do with all the rest of the (current) ‘M’ fleet,” Redeker said. After a cost analyses by Metro-North, "it became very clear that investing anything in an M-4 and an M-6 -- from a lifecycle point of view and a cost benefit … was significantly more expensive than what we opted for,” a single,
unpowered car.

The 25 cars will operate singly and – not having traction motors – will not be self-propelled. All of the railroad’s other electric, “multi-unit” cars, including the M-8 cars previously ordered, work as married pairs or triplets, and have traction motors. They cannot be split apart to operate individually.

Redeker said the New Haven Line will get the benefit of having single cars that can address capacity needs in a far more incremental way than a married pair, and the cost of ordering them, compared to overhauling the M-4s and M-6s, “came out to be a super deal,
and Kawasaki was willing to sign on to that deal.”

The M-8s are being built by Japan’s Kawasaki Rail Car Inc., with the
first 38 cars produced in Kobe, Japan, and the remaining 367 coming from the company’s factory in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Redeker described negotiations with Kawasaki to build the
additional cars as “arduous.”

The state’s Department of Transportation website says the 25
cars will cost about $3.325 each, totaling about $93 million.

Connecticut’s share of the purchase will be $60.5 million,
with New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority paying $32.6 million, the website says.

Redeker said ordering 25 additional cars was made possible by using some of the $1 billion Gov. Dannell P. Malloy put in his proposed 2011-2013 biennial budget for transportation improvements.

Metro-North has three eight-car trains of M-8s in passenger service on the New Haven Line, with another six M-8 cars set aside as spares.

The first M-8s built in Nebraska are expected to arrive by the end of August. After that, Redeker said, the railroad expects the factory to ramp up to producing ten cars a month.