Noah Addis/The Star-LedgerMike DiPallo, PATH director and general manager, looks at the inside of a new PATH car during a press conference at the PATH maintenance facility in Harrison today.
The first new PATH rail cars in more than two decades won't be on the tracks until year's end, but officials  today showed off the sleek design of the trains intended to carry passengers into the mid-21st century.
A stainless steel exterior replaces the current aluminum. Blue seats replace the multi-color mix. Close-captioned television monitors will provide information and ads. Lumbar support for passengers' backs is better. Improved speakers and automated voices will announce stops, along with digital readouts. And train engineers will get speedometers.
At $1.3 million each, the 340 new cars will be phased in over the next three years, bringing PATH "from the oldest fleet to the newest fleet in the nation,'' said Anthony Coscia, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's chairman.
Coscia and other officials showed off a "mock-up'' of a new PATH car at the system's Harrision maintenance  facility, with older cars dotting tracks in a cavernous hanger. "These cars are loaded with a thousand cool technologies,'' said Anthony Shorris, the agency's executive director.
Many of the current cars date back to 1962, when the Port Authority took over the old Hudson and Manhattan Railroad and established the PATH in a deal allowing the original World Trade Center to be built. The newest came on line in 1987.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/01/new_path_trains_boast_speedome.html
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