If you ride several different subway lines, you might have noticed a recent trend: one subway car model seems to have more busted A/C units than any other type.
"The majority of the hot cars that we've seen over the past couple of days have been the R62As," said MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz.
You probably know them as the 1 and 6 trains — as does the riding, tweeting public
The R62As date back to the Reagan Administration, and therein lies the problem. "The technology at the time provided for one compressor for each of the air units in the car," Ortiz said. "So if you lost that one compressor, you basically lost all of the air for that entire car."
Newer cars — or older cars that have been overhauled — are built differently. "They have separate HVAC systems, where if one fails, you can use another within that car," said Ortiz. And repairing them is simpler: the HVAC systems "are easily removable from the top of the trains." Almost like Lego, a broken HVAC unit can be popped off a train, repaired, and popped back on. But "that's not the case with the older technology cars," he said, "where you have to work on the entire component as a whole to address it."
Meanwhile, the city is in the thick of a heatwave, which usually exacerbates so-called "hot car" complaints.
Link with tweets...