First Public Look: TriMet Type 6 LRV
Written by William C. Vantuono, Editor-in-Chief
TriMet’s new Type 6 MAX system light rail vehicles (LRVs) will make a public “sneak peak” debut on Oct. 15 at the SE Park Ave MAX Station in Milwaukie, Ore. Described by TriMet as “our most technologically advanced” equipment, the Type 6 is a Siemens Mobility S700 low-floor LRV, built at the Siemens plant in Sacramento, Calif.
The Type 6, of which 26 were ordered in 2019 with options for up to 60 more, will replace TriMet’s oldest LRVs, the Bombardier-built Type 1 high-floor, which went into service in 1986 when the agency’s first line, the East Side MAX Project (now the Blue Line), opened. Four additional Type 6s are being purchased for A Better Red MAX Extension and Reliability Project, for a total of 30. Tri-Met expects the Type 6s to enter service by the end of this year. Deliveries were expected to start in 2021 but were delayed until December 2022 by COVID.
TriMet has been taking deliveries of the Type 6 since at its Ruby Junction Rail Operations Facility in Gresham. They undergo extensive yard testing before advancing to main line testing and certification on the MAX system. The Type 6 offers “several new features to improve the riding experience and performance.” Among them are capacity for 168 passengers, digital interior destination signs, LED lights indicating available doors (green when a door is available, red when not available and flashing yellow when in motion), and improved HVAC equipment.
TriMet’s original 26 Type 1s “have proven to be extremely durable over the years, thanks in large part to the work of TriMet’s maintenance team,” the agency noted. “Some will have traveled 2 million miles by the time they’re retired. We will be preserving at least one for the Electric Railway Museum in Brooks, Ore. Most of the others will likely be recycled locally. We’re reusing whatever we can from the Type 1s, including their fluids, which we’ll be removing and using elsewhere in our fleet.”
TriMet in 1997 was the first North American transit agency to deploy low-floor LRVs with the Type 2 SD660 from Siemens. Since then, Siemens has supplied every MAX LRV: The Type 3 (also SD660) in 2003, Type 4 SD70 in 2009, Type 5 S700 in 2015, and now the Type 6 S700.
