SEPTA won a $317 million federal grant to help replace aging Market-Frankford Line cars

SEPTA will get $317 million from the federal government toward the purchase of 200 rail cars for the Market-Frankford Line to replace aging models with cracked frames that workers in an Upper Darby repair shop have kept running on the system’s most heavily traveled line with “hoagies of steel.”

It’s by far the largest Federal Transit Administration competitive grant SEPTA has ever won, agency officials said.

U.S. Sens. Robert Casey and John Fetterman, as well as U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans shared word of the award from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, which includes the nation’s largest investment in public transit, highways and bridges in about a generation.

“I fought to pass the infrastructure law because of its promise to bring game-changing investments to Pennsylvania,” Casey said in a statement. “With this vital funding, SEPTA can modernize its inventory and continue providing safe and reliable transportation for all of Southeastern Pennsylvania.”

SEPTA officials are evaluating bids from rail car manufacturers to build the M5 cars for the El, a procurement that the agency estimates will cost $700 million to $800 million for the new fleet. A companion project will install a new signal system and other track improvements on the line.

Once a contract is signed, it would take about five years for the first of the new rail cars to arrive.

The incumbent M4 El cars are about 25 years old and, in addition to the structural cracks, need other regular repairs. They have become more unreliable, at times leading to delays and trip cancellations.

“The Market-Frankford Line is the workhorse — moving more people than any other service and making SEPTA’s unified and interconnected transit network possible,” SEPTA CEO and General Manager Leslie S. Richards said in a statement. Replacing the M4 cars “is our highest priority,” she said.

In 2017, SEPTA mechanics pulling up the floorboards during an overhaul of several M4s found cracks in the body bolsters, 94-inch steel beams that span the car on either end, supporting the weight of its frame and connecting it to the wheel assemblies, which pivot as the train moves.

Welders and mechanics at a SEPTA repair garage in Upper Darby developed a fix that braces those body bolsters between two metal plates — which they christened the “hoagie of steel.”

SEPTA needs about 96 functioning cars to provide the El’s scheduled level of weekday service, officials told The Inquirer last spring. On average, about 85 cars are available, with a steady stream of them rotating off the line for inspections or needed repairs.

Before this new award, the largest competitive federal grant SEPTA has received was $96 million in early 2022, supplemental COVID-19 operating assistance from a discretionary program funded by the American Rescue Act.