R179 (New York City Subway car)

The R179 is a future new technology (NTT) rail car ordered for New York City Subway's B Division. These cars may replace some of the remaining R32s and all remaining R42s in service, which are running well past the average service life of a New York City Subway car. In addition, they will expand the system fleet for the Second Avenue Subway. The contract to build these cars has been awarded to Bombardier Transportation, who will build the cars in its Plattsburgh, New York facility.

Background

The R179 contract, which originally consisted of 420 cars, was intended to replace all of the R44s. Due to structural integrity issues found on New York City Transit's R44s in early 2010, its retirement was facilitated by option order cars of the R160 car order. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority later dropped the plan to order R179s for the Staten Island Railway, instead opting to overhaul some R46s to replace the existing R44s there. However, the plan to overhaul the R46s for the Staten Island Railway was recently dropped, and new future R211 cars can potentially replace the Staten Island Railway's fleet of R44s instead.