SEPTA's Regional Rail passengers, packed into overcrowded cars during morning and evening rush hours, have been waiting a long time to show the love.
SEPTA ordered 120 of the Silverliner V cars, at a cost of $274 million. The contract for the Silverliner V's was first awarded in 2004, thrown out because of competitors' complaints, and awarded again in 2006.
Production delays have pushed back by nine months the date for the first cars to be put into service.
"The important thing is that we get it right," Casey said Tuesday. "The last cars lasted 47 years, and there's a good chance these will have to last a number of decades, too.
The new Silverliners will replace 73 railcars built for SEPTA in the 1960s. With the retirement of the old cars and the addition of the 120 new ones, SEPTA is to have about 400 railcars by mid-2011.
The new cars, with state-of-the-art air-conditioning and heating systems and wide mid-car doors to speed boardings, are being built in South Korea with final assembly at a plant on Weccacoe Avenue in South Philadelphia.
The builder of the cars, United Transit Systems, is a consortium of Hyundai-Rotem Co. of South Korea and Sojitz Corp. of America, a U.S. subsidiary of Sojitz Corp. of Japan.
The two cars being tested Tuesday are "pilot" cars that were fully manufactured in South Korea. Wires were still draped on the overhead luggage racks and some seats were covered with plywood platforms Tuesday, as SEPTA crews continued to work on the cars' new communications system.
"The communications system has to work, and we need to get our people trained, and we're good to go," Casey said. He said the first cars should be in service sometime in October, but he declined to be more specific.
Training will take about a week for each crew.
