MARTA train maker stumbled in other cities. Officials say it paid off.

“Lots and lots of sleepless nights,” Steve Rotheram, Liverpool’s mayor, said in an interview for this story. “But the thing that is paramount for us, and it will be for your politicians, is safety. Safety has been the number one factor.”

Credit: Getty Images

Credit: Getty Images

Last week, MARTA postponed its own debut of a similar train from Stadler as it works through testing issues. The launch of the new trains has been pushed back multiple times, first from 2025 to the spring of this year, then to June before last Thursday’s special VIP ride for regional dignitaries was canceled.

Other city debuts of Stadler trains that The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reviewed were also bumpy, marked by a refrain of delays and mechanical woes. Those growing pains ultimately paid dividends: Newcastle, Liverpool, and Glasgow in the United Kingdom all saw service improve.

MARTA officials have set a goal of putting some new trains on the tracks in time for the eight World Cup games this month. Those plans now seem clouded by last week’s canceled event. The transit agency has not offered a new date for service.

In the coming days, Atlanta’s population is expected to surge as hundreds of thousands of soccer fans visit this summer, many of whom will travel downtown by way of the city’s aging subway system. MARTA officials have been working hard to begin putting its new Stadler trains on the tracks — sleek, futuristic cars that are largely automated.

The trains are custom-made, so MARTA’s vehicles aren’t a precise replica of the company’s trains elsewhere. But the rollouts the AJC reviewed are from the same type of Stadler car known as the METRO.

A spokesperson for Stadler said the issues other cities in the UK reported were “not observed” on the MARTA trains.

“Stadler and MARTA are ready to provide safe, clean, and reliable transportation when the trains start passenger service​,” said Charlotte Thalhammer​, a spokesperson for Stadler.

The UK projects in Newcastle, Glasgow, and Liverpool had initial challenges which is “common with projects of this scale,” said Thalhammer​. The challenges were because of a variety of reasons, she said, many not related to the trains themselves.

“They have experienced great improvements since then.”

For example, Newcastle was able to phase out its over 46-year old legacy metro fleet, she said.

Dozens of train cars in MARTA’s fleet are the same age or older. Mechanical failures disrupt rider commutes routinely, and the transit agency can’t swap out the most unreliable cars until the new trains enter service.

MARTA has had its own issues with Stadler, though the drama so far has been far more contained and behind the scenes. MARTA officials privately threatened Stadler with financial penalties last August, though they say they never needed to follow through.

Jonathan Hunt, the transit agency’s interim general manager and CEO, has promised to not put any train on the tracks that isn’t 100% safe and tested. He didn’t rule out the idea that riders may experience glitches along the way.

“We always want our patrons to show us grace and patience when we’re deploying a brand-new system,” Hunt said.

The issues in other cities the AJC reviewed followed a similar pattern: the rollout was delayed and messy, followed by improved service for riders. Atlanta is betting that the Stadler cars will help the transit agency put a stop to years of nagging service delays caused by mechanical issues on a near-daily basis.

In Liverpool, the mayor describes a turnaround story that is remarkable. The significant delays, he says, are no more. He credits Stadler’s trains for helping. Now on many days, the city’s transit system is able to provide 98% to 99% of its scheduled service, his office said.

“You quite quickly get over the difficulties and start thinking about the positives,” Rotheram said. “That’s where I am at the moment.”

Getting there, though, wasn’t easy.

There were core manufacturing issues with the Stadler trains, the mayor said, including that they weren’t properly sealed, allowing water to seep in. This triggered doors opening onto the tracks instead of the platform, he said.

Another major issue involved the batteries that partially powered the new trains. The system is supposed to switch the trains from electric rail power to battery power, but they repeatedly malfunctioned, he said.

There were also small things that had an outsized impact. Seat adjustments for different train operators caused cancellations, he said, and windshield wipers also did not work on a number of cars.

“It’s not the first time a train’s had windscreen wipers, is it?” he said. “Those things really frustrate me.”

If he could do it over again, Rotheram said he would have set aside more time for testing before putting the cars into service. But as he reflected on the experience, Rotheram said the problems his city experienced with Stadler are part of broader issues within the rail industry.

“It’s almost accepted within the industry that trains will be problematic and have difficulty, and I can’t quite get my head around that,” he said. “You don’t buy a computer from a shop or a store, and expect it only to work three-quarters of the time.”

On the opposite coast of England is Newcastle, a city that also had its own rocky train rollout with Stadler. The first train was delivered in early 2023. Service was scheduled to start later that year but got pushed back to 2024.

The pandemic complicated the rollout, as it did in Atlanta and in other places the AJC reviewed. But the trains the company sent to Newcastle were fraught with other mechanical issues.

The trains were still being phased in when the new fleet had to be briefly pulled out of service last year after an incident where a door malfunctioned and opened onto the tracks instead of the platform, David Punton, a spokesperson for the Newcastle transit agency, said. Newcastle worked with Stadler on a software fix and the issue hasn’t happened since, he said.

Introducing the new trains was the largest and most complex project the metro agency had undertaken, Punton said.

Some problems are to be expected with the introduction of a new fleet, he said, adding: “This is why we have taken a careful and phased approach to fleet introduction to ensure we can monitor, amend, and refine any issues as required.”

And Stadler trains also had a fraught debut in neighboring Scotland. In Glasgow, city officials tapped the manufacturer to build 17 new trains for one of the oldest metro systems in the world.

The new trains arrived for testing in 2019, and didn’t start in service until late 2023.

Initially, the train schedule was less reliable. From late 2023 to July 2024, as new trains were added to the system, there were three times as many disruptions compared to the same period a year earlier, according to the news outlet Glasgow Live.

A spokesperson for the Glasgow transit agency told the AJC that many of the service issues were the result of legacy trains breaking down. But the new Stadler trains also had problems in the beginning.

“Faults with the new trains were mostly because of technical issues,” spokesperson Andrea Thompson said, like electrical issues or sensor placements.

Service has since improved, according to data from the transit agency. Trains were on-time 97.6% of the time in the last 13 months, the agency reported in May.

The cofounder of the Atlanta urban advocacy group ThreadATL, Darin Givens, was in Glasgow last month with family and said the trains were overall a great ride.

He loved the open gangway that lets passengers walk from one end of the train to the other, as well as the digital map screens and the well-lit interior.

“It really bodes well for the experience of being on a MARTA train, to think about the feel that you have in this shiny new car,” Givens said. “It feels like you have some value when your experience is invested in.”