7000-series - Delivery & Updates

[garmon757]

19 hours ago, Busjack said:

In any event, this came up to refute @Sam92's assertion about 98th, which he later said was a misunderstanding. Anyway, if one assumes a fleet increase of 100 based on exercising Option 1 in time of RLE, Howard won't be able to handle it.

It still leaves the question whether maintenance is separate at Howard and 98th, or the cars are interchanged.

Maintenance isn’t the  problem. The problem would be car balancing after the RLE is completed. Right now, we’re still trying to wrap up the midlife overhaul with the 5000s while we can’t even catch a break with these consistent defects as of lately. Including Linden Yard, we have a total capacity of 588 cars currently (Howard 274 + 98th 234 + Linden 80). Unless Purple and Yellow Lines have an exercising option of 100 cars, Howard indeed won’t be able to be a viable option. 

[garmon757]

Spotted 7315-16 in service as of yesterday. 

[garmon757]

7313-14 and 7319-20 are currently at Skokie awaiting clearance for revenue service. 7157-58 are now determined as a long term hold due to a mechanical fault while unfortunately isn’t set up as a complete unit. There are about 16 current cars are on a maintenance hold due to a barrage of defects from the Blue Line, in which it makes sense why more 2600s popped up back on the Blue Line.

[renardo870]

On 8/18/2026 at 5:29 PM, garmon757 said:

7313-14 and 7319-20 are currently at Skokie awaiting clearance for revenue service. 7157-58 are now determined as a long term hold due to a mechanical fault while unfortunately isn’t set up as a complete unit. There are about 16 current cars are on a maintenance hold due to a barrage of defects from the Blue Line, in which it makes sense why more 2600s popped up back on the Blue Line.

7313 - 7314 and a pic of 7319. 7320 was on the other side at Skokie 

[Busjack]

1 hour ago, Transcend_dayo said:

I’m not exactly fully versed on this, but I believe the reason that the 7000s options weren’t picked up was because of the National Defense Authorization Act which prevented more contracts being signed with Chinese companies for infrastructure (paraphrasing here.) This was of course made into law after the base order of 7000s were signed. Even if the CTA wanted to, they couldn’t sign on for the options for more cars. 
 

Their (the CTAs) hand was forced with the procurement of the 9000s. I personally don’t like it, though. As far back as I can remember, the brown line has been operating with a hybrid of 2600s and 3200s even when Kimball had all of the 3200s in the fleet assigned to it. If the 9000s series contract get signed, it’ll only be enough to cover the replacement of the 2600s, leaving not enough cars for the brown line to operate. Unless, of course, the CTA does some fleet management shenanigans and is willing to operate a yard with a hybrid of cars. 
 

I personally think that the CTA [made a strategic error] by not making the 5000s and 7000s compatible. It’ll be an even bigger [error] if they don’t make the 7000s a 9000s compatible. They could probably try to make some software modifications to the 5000 and 7000 right now to make them compatible, but who knows what that’ll do to the maintenance and procurement contracts. Probably some clause that it makes software modifications illegal by the CTA, along with some other IP legalese that prevents them from doing anything. 

What I put in bold is about the only thing you got correct.

• While CTA has not yet exercised the option for 7000s, General Counsel, in requesting Board approval for a settlement with CRRC ($40 million against a $220 million claim) said that the base order is to be completed by 2028, and the intent is to exercise an option for 100 cars to be delivered in 2029 in time for RLE. You could have looked up the thread for that.
• What you said about the National Defense Authorization Act applies to buses, not rail cars.  49 USC 5323(u)(5) provides:

• Quote

  (A) Parties to executed contracts.-This subsection, including the certification requirement under paragraph (4), shall not apply to the award of any contract or subcontract made by a public transportation agency with a rail rolling stock manufacturer described in paragraph (1) if the manufacturer and the public transportation agency have executed a contract for rail rolling stock before the date of enactment of this subsection.

  CTA executed the contract around 2015. The Statutory Notes state that subsec. (u) was added in 2019.

• Again, if you looked up the 9000s topic, after Bombardier was the only bidder around 2013, CTA decided to put out a "clean sheet" specification, with such things as that the proposer could specify the kind of doors, and the kind of couplers, for instance, with the only constraint being that if a different coupler were used, an adapter for mechanical coupling must be provided. Apparently CRRC was able to provide doors and couplers comparable to prior CTA practice, but there apparently are other incompatibilities. We don't know what they are, but someone posted about a week ago that electrically coupling a 5000 to a 2400 by accident burned out the electronics in the 2400.

• Since the 9000s are scheduled to be delivered around 2033, you want something compatible with the 7000s, which were tested in 2019, or 14 years before. We don't know what the "conditions of the Replacement Grant were, but they were apparently sufficient for CTA to say that a new design process is necessary.

To summarize, it may be current social media practice to load it with stream of consciousness partial information, but personally, I don't appreciate it. Next time, do some research first.

 

[Transcend_dayo]

41 minutes ago, Busjack said:

While CTA has not yet exercised the option for 7000s, General Counsel, in requesting Board approval for a settlement with CRRC ($40 million against a $220 million claim) said that the base order is to be completed by 2028, and the intent is to exercise an option for 100 cars to be delivered in 2029 in time for RLE. You could have looked up the thread for that.

Could’ve! Should’ve! Didn’t. I assumed that the current US administration wouldn’t be too friendly on spending federal money on exercising the contract options, due to political and financial concerns. I also assumed that CRRC may not be too excited to fulfill those options, for the same reasons I outlined above. However, we all know the adage “To assume is to make an ASS of U and ME,” and I would like to apologize. 

 

41 minutes ago, Busjack said:

What you said about the National Defense Authorization Act applies to buses, not rail cars.  49 USC 5323(u)(5) provides:

The federal definition of “rolling stock” applies to railcars and transit buses. However, I do concede that the options are still available. 
 

46 minutes ago, Busjack said:

Again, if you looked up the 9000s topic, after Bombardier was the only bidder around 2013, CTA decided to put out a "clean sheet" specification, with such things as that the proposer could specify the kind of doors, and the kind of couplers, for instance, with the only constraint being that if a different coupler were used, an adapter for mechanical coupling must be provided. Apparently CRRC was able to provide doors and couplers comparable to prior CTA practice, but there apparently are other incompatibilities. We don't know what they are, but someone posted about a week ago that electrically coupling a 5000 to a 2400 by accident burned out the electronics in the 2400.

Wow! Who would’ve guessed that electrically connecting one series of train to another series that clearly says [DO NOT ELECTRICALLY CONNECT WITH OTHER SERIES RAILCARS] on the electrical cover in black and orange could cause damage to the electronics! RIP to that 2400 though. 
I also don’t know what incompatibilities there could be between the 5000s and the 7000s. I took a stab at it and guessed that the primary compatibility issue was  software, probably software that Bombardier did didn’t want the CTA or CRRC to reverse engineer or own.

 

56 minutes ago, Busjack said:

Since the 9000s are scheduled to be delivered around 2033, you want something compatible with the 7000s, which were tested in 2019, or 14 years before. We don't know what the "conditions of the Replacement Grant were, but they were apparently sufficient for CTA to say that a new design process is necessary.

Yes? Of course I want them to be compatible. The meat of my argument was “I think having the 9000s and the 7000s be incompatible is horrible for flexibility,” and I pointed to the brown line fleet as a potential issue in the future. You’re acting like railcars built 14 years apart being compatible with each other is a novel idea. The 2000s were built in 1964, the 3200s in 1992, and every rail car between them were compatible with one another. Every rail car was a new design process, being built by a different contractor, and they still made it work.

 

1 hour ago, Busjack said:

What I put in bold is about the only thing you got correct.

———————————————

To summarize, it may be current social media practice to load it with stream of consciousness partial information, but personally, I don't appreciate it. Next time, do some research first.

I don’t appreciate your tone. I provided what I knew/ thought/ searched and was willing to be wrong. You’re reacting like what I said was entirely wrong or irrelevant. I would ask you to be kinder but who knows if that’ll matter. 

[Busjack]

2 hours ago, Transcend_dayo said:

Yes? Of course I want them to be compatible. The meat of my argument was “I think having the 9000s and the 7000s be incompatible is horrible for flexibility,” and I pointed to the brown line fleet as a potential issue in the future. You’re acting like railcars built 14 years apart being compatible with each other is a novel idea. The 2000s were built in 1964, the 3200s in 1992, and every rail car between them were compatible with one another. Every rail car was a new design process, being built by a different contractor, and they still made it work.

Again, if you go back to such sources as chicago-l.org, you'll find out that there was a specification for 3500s that would be compatible with 3200s, but was withdrawn, essentially because no one would bid. Instead, there was a new specification for AC traction 5000s. As I similarly noted, there was a second specification for the 7000s because only Bombardier would bid on the first. IDK what the incompatibilities were, but the 7000s aren't electrically compatible with the 5000s. 

The import of my 14-year-old comment is that technology is now developing rapidly. CTA experimented with solid state controllers in the last 2400s, and they interfered with the cab signals and were replaced. Solid state inverters are essential to operating AC motors. Obviously, DC motors are obsolete, even though they existed in some form in Chicago since about 1894. IDK what else in the 5000s is incompatible, whether it is proprietary software or the punch map with the LED matrix behind it. But by making the argument that the 1964 era system lasted for 30 years is not a convincing argument that 2005 technology should control in 2030, even if CTA could get competitive bids on it, which it says it could not.

As far as yard compatibility, CTA announcements that the 3200s will get a life-extending rehab, and the 9000s are replacements indicate that the 9000s will replace the 3200s and any remaining 2600s, and thus will mostly be on the Brown and Orange Lines.

2 hours ago, Transcend_dayo said:

... However, we all know the adage “To assume is to make an ASS of U and ME,” and I would like to apologize. ...

I don’t appreciate your tone. I provided what I knew/ thought/ searched and was willing to be wrong. You’re reacting like what I said was entirely wrong or irrelevant. I would ask you to be kinder but who knows if that’ll matter. 

I'll stand on what I said. 

There was enough inconsistent with information on primary sources (in this case, the text of 49 USC, or links in the above topic), or long-established sources (chicago-l.org) that your assumptions or thoughts came up with the wrong conclusions. 

 

[Elkmn]

Saw them pulling 7309 out at skokie shops to prepare for coupling with 7310