MBTA is rolling out new fleet on Blue Line

The new Blue Line cars were manufactured by Siemens Transportation Systems. The price tag of the long-delayed contract, with spare parts and engineering, has reached about $200 million. (JOSH REYNOLDS FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE)

MBTA Blue Line commuters will finally ride the first of 94 new subway cars within weeks, after production snags and manufacturing flaws delayed delivery by more than three years.

Managers will start replacing the current fleet of 70 rusted, blue-and-white cars in January, and expect to have all the new cars in service by summer 2009. Riders on the line that connects downtown with East Boston, Revere, and Logan International Airport should notice improvements quickly, according to the T.

T General Manager Daniel A. Grabauskas said he expects to have enough of the cars in service by summer to link six cars together, instead of four, to alleviate crowding. The Blue Line, which attracts about 60,950 riders per weekday, is among the busiest in the MBTA system.

"Sometimes, you can't even get on," said Brittany Choukas, 20, of Revere, who attends Blaine Beauty School and rides the train three times a day.

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has struggled to replace the aging subway cars after placing its $172.7 million order with Siemens Transportation Systems six years ago. The price tag, with spare parts and engineering, has reached about $200 million.

Quality has been an issue. Grabauskas berated the company last year for "sloppiness," threatening to withhold payments after the first cars arrived with leaking doors and smoking air conditioners. "It looked like a kid had done this," he said at the time.

Since then, the relationship with Siemens has improved "180 degrees," Grabauskas said. "They weren't showing us the love. They're loving us now and we're loving them."

Most of the existing Blue Line train cars were built in 1979 and 1980 and are showing their age. Large patches of rust splotch the roofs and discolor the blue and white paint on the sides. Inside, beige electrical tape holds together tattered vinyl seats. Faux wood paneling gives the walls the vintage look of a den in the Brady Bunch household.

"This is what I remember as a kid," said Karen McDonald, 42, a Winthrop resident who has been riding the train to a new job for the last few weeks after a long hiatus. "They could use an upgrade," she said.

MBTA employees have been testing the first 12 cars, running them without passengers and identifying kinks, including a problem with hand brakes that has since been fixed.

Four of them are halfway through what the MBTA calls a burn-in period, in which they run 500 miles without passengers on test tracks to make sure they can handle the rigors of a regular schedule. Only the automated public address system needs tweaking, said Grabauskas. That set of four cars will debut with daily T passengers by the end of January, he said.

Oliver Hauck, president and chief operating officer of Siemens, said his company underestimated the complexity of the job and ran into "an accumulation of unlucky circumstances," including the bankruptcy of one of its subcontractors, which slowed production. Early last year, executives transferred top managers from the firm's US headquarters in Sacramento, its world headquarters in Erlangen, Germany, and one of its largest plants in Vienna, to a manufacturing facility in Elmira, N.Y. It doubled the size of its project work force to about 100 people and moved them into a new, larger manufacturing facility.

"It was unpleasant when we were delayed and we had to go through all these additional efforts," Hauck said. "That was not our intent."

The company had been hoping to burnish its North American reputation with the high-profile Boston contract and still hopes to impress Boston commuters with its quality.

Grabauskas and Hauck test-drove one of the new cars in October.

"They're beautiful, and they run so smoothly," Grabauskas said.

The Blue Line is among the most efficient modes to the airport, with access from the hotels near the Aquarium, State Street, and Government Center stations. Train cars yesterday were full of passengers hauling duffel bags and wheeled suitcases.

This is the second troubled contract the MBTA has had in its recent efforts to replace aging train cars. The authority ordered 100 trolleys for the Green Line from Breda, an Italian firm now known as AnsaldoBreda, in 1995 for $222 million.

T officials halted delivery of those trains in 2004 after frequent breakdowns and a $50 million lawsuit from AnsaldoBreda over the terms of the contract. Last month, Grabauskas said the dispute with that company also ended well and that he will take delivery on the last of 95 cars, 10 more than he negotiated in a settlement, by the middle of next year.

Riders have been frustrated with the many turns these big contracts take. Eric Bourassa, a consumer advocate with the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group, said that in surveys commuters list reliability as the top factor in determining whether they will use public transit.

"Replacing cars goes to the heart of just having a system that doesn't break down as much," he said.