Metra is gearing up to roll into a new era of innovation and sustainability powered by battery technology. This culmination has been years in the making, built upon years of research, industry engagement and above all—patience for the technology to develop.  

Seven years ago, Metra challenged the industry to convert its older locomotives from diesel to zero-emission battery power. Though a request for proposal (RFP) was issued and a bid was accepted, the challenge proved to be too much at the time.  

“The technology hadn't developed far enough yet that people could sit there and say, ‘Hey, I can build you one of these,’" Metra CEO and Executive Director Jim Derwinski told me during an interview. 

That didn’t deter the agency. Derwinski kept an eye on battery technology’s progression, specifically in Europe’s trainsets and the freight industry’s locomotives. As industry peers saw success in battery performance, Derwinski was ready to put out another RFP. This time though, Metra chose to take two different paths. In September 2022, Metra issued an RFP for battery-powered trainsets and eventually awarded the $154 million contract in February 2024 to Stadler US Inc. The manufacturer is tasked with completing a base order for eight two-car, battery-powered trainsets that are currently being assembled in Salt Lake City. They’re expected to be delivered as early as 2027.  

Metra didn’t abandon its quest for greener locomotives, either. Earlier this year, the agency published an RFP for five, all-electric locomotives. Responses are being evaluated, with the goal of awarding a contract next year, according to Metra Spokesperson Michael Gillis.  

I recently sat down with Derwinski and Gillis to get a deep dive on why Metra is pursing battery technology, how it’s executing these two projects and what it will take to get them to the finish line and beyond. It has been condensed and edited for clarity.  

Metra's journey to implementing battery technology 

Megan Perrero (MP): Why did you decide to pursue both of these projects instead of picking one over the other? 

Jim Derwinski (JD): I think first and foremost, we did a solicitation for zero emission many years ago. In a lot of cases, the technology itself was kind of early on. Well, over time, the technology has marched forward. In Europe, they've been actually deploying these train sets and so we kind of took a stab at it. So we put out the RFP, and we awarded it to Stadler.  

The battery locomotive one, that's a little bit different. So the battery locomotive is what it's going to be demanded to do. Let's even take a short example. Maybe it's going to have to go 40 miles one way and 40 miles the other way. It's going to have to have our start and stop patterns, and it's going to have to get up to our track speed. For us, legally, 79 miles an hour. This is a lot more demand, and it's got to tow the passenger cars behind it. The difference between the train sets [and the locomotives] is train sets are lighter, less capacity. You can put more batteries in the locomotive depending on how big they want to make it. And that technology, the freight industry has been starting to dabble in.

So for us, I looked at the opportunity, and I like to say kick it, smell it, feel it and see what it really does in real-world conditions—not just in a lab or in a controlled environment. Our hope is that there is a manufacturer out there that will be able to build us a battery unit that can meet our salient needs. If the ultimate goal is reliability, reduced emissions footprint and potentially lower operating costs, if the potential bidders produce something that gives us all that, that's incredible.  

MP: Why is Metra interested in battery propulsion? 

JD: Well, from a zero-emission standpoint, [based on] our research and discussions with other operators, battery technology is in many years advanced right now from hydrogen. The real challenge for us here in the U.S., specifically the Midwest, is there is no supply chain for hydrogen that really exists. From the type of fuel demand that we have, there's just currently no infrastructure to support it. And then of course the grants are what gave us that ability to do that. These grants are going to allow not just Metra, but allow the industry to test these batteries.  

MP: For the all-electric locomotives RFP, how did you identify the vehicle specifications without being overly prescriptive?  

JD: The first step in that is we've been talking to the manufacturers in the industry for years now about what is the next step. Obviously talking to a lot of our peers, the freight industry. Their engineering and their mechanical departments have shared with us their experiences both with hydrogen, batteries and kind of seeing this evolution occur. So our spec was really based on the operational performance need that the vehicle needs to produce. One of the biggest challenges, of course, when we talk about anything in the rail industry, is limited capacity. There's really only one passenger locomotive manufacturer out there right now. When that supply chain is so limited, it challenges all of us to really be innovative in this. This is an opportunity I think for a lot of people to learn a lot of different things about how this technology will work. 

MP: How did the solicitation process differ when it came to procuring the zero-emission train sets?  

JD: [It was] more defined because of the fact that vehicles have been produced like this in the world. We did our investigation on the front end to see what the industry could produce, but on the other side of it, the RFP was pretty standard. This one's giving a little more freedom to the manufacturers to really produce different ideas without us being too prescriptive other than the salient characteristics of operations. 

MP: When you were reviewing the bids that you received for the trainsets, what were you looking for from the vendor side? 

JD: For the train sets, obviously we were first and foremost looking at experience. Did they have the experience building what they said that they could build for us? One of the big challenges, especially with newer manufacturers, is it [Federal Railroad Administration (FRA)] compliant? It's one thing to say, "Hey, I want to build you a train, and it's going to cost this much." The other one is, have you gone through the rigorous crash worthiness tests and all the other specific things that need to happen for an FRA-compliant vehicle? I think it was just pretty much a standard process. And then you get into the Q&A section where you bring in the manufacturers and then we can actually challenge them through dialogue of some of the things that we may have concern about. 

MP: How do the train sets and zero-emission locomotives support Metra’s regional rail priority that is part of the 2026 strategic plan? 

JD: In the beginning, we're going to use [the train sets] in a limited use service area. It's a 15-mile section of track on our Rock Island District just to start really understanding the capacity, the recharge requirements, the recharge timelines and how we can incorporate that in there. That particular line, in the near future, will have pretty much half-hour service for most of the day. Today, those runs are done with diesels. So to tie into the regional rail, it's a one for one replacement of what's already in the service model.  

In an ideal world, [the zero-emission locomotives] come on property, they are a direct replacement for the service needs, and they're able to perform at the same level as the diesel locomotives. The benefit that they have is obviously the reduced emissions footprint on the region. And then secondly, the noise footprint on the region. They were really more of just a direct replacement for aged technology. 

Michael Gillis: But our strategic plan has other goals that these check the boxes on. The strategic plan also calls for innovation to become more efficient and effective. So it checks those boxes. And also the environmental advantage of these checks the box for being more sustainable. 

JD: And the other thing thinking much farther ahead, depending on the performance of the vehicles, we've actually had discussions about could these vehicles possibly move between lines? We have one line that's electric. Today, you'd have to hang wire to get that anywhere else. These vehicles have the ability to go between two lines that potentially down the road through a reconfiguration on the build could work.  

In our strategic plan, we talk about efficiencies. If these vehicles tend to have less capacity on them, rather than haul an eight-car diesel train around for our evening service where we're not filling that train up, these become an efficiency model specifically for a certain time of the service day. So there's so many possibilities, I think, in the fact that we just want to really figure out how they operate over the next couple of years before we make longer term decisions on other vehicle replacements and service models. 

MP: What kind of progress has been made to prepare infrastructure for the new train sets and locomotives? 

JD: We already know we have the infrastructure in place to do trickle charge based on our salient characteristics that we've laid out in the scope. So the trickle charge could be anywhere from an hour to eight hours, depending on how depleted the batteries get during the course of their use. The fast charge is the area that we're working with Stadler right now to determine the load requirements. Then actually we're looking at building this thing in a more portable manner where if we use it right now in the Rock Island and then we decide, “hey, this might work in another area,” now we've developed more portable types of units. I'll just call it the big battery charger that can plug into the ComEd power and eventually just hook up to an output, which then goes into the vehicle. Right now, the vehicles are going to be designed with a pantograph on the overhead that would deliver the higher voltage. And so again, that type of infrastructure, the battery charger, we'll call it, our [vision] is it's portable. The only thing we'd have to hang would be putting up a little bit of catenary. 

MP: How is Metra planning to upskill its workforce so the team is ready to receive these new train sets? 

JD: Part of the bid spec is the manufacturer has to provide training. This is obviously all new technology. What'll end up happening is the vehicles will get here, and they're going to go through seven to nine months of dynamic testing. We'll have to train the operators on how to use the vehicles, and we'll have to train the mechanics on how to repair the vehicles. There'll be formal coursework that they go through. There'll be a service rep on site during the entire nine-month period before they go back to Pueblo, Colo., where they're going to have further dynamic testing before they go in revenue service.  

MP: Do you have any final thoughts you’d like to share? 

JD: With regard to just alternate fuels, we're interested. We obviously operate some pretty legacy equipment out here. Some of the things that we've been doing as we've modernized our fleet, going just from DC traction to AC traction, have proven to be incredible on the reliability side and the maintenance side of being more efficient. So we continue to really look at this as not the only potential solution, but as a piece of that conversation. I think in a lot of cases, the U.S. is way behind Europe and Asia. So, we continue to look over the big ponds and see what they're doing over there. It's the idea of testing it in this environment is very important. Without those federal grants for these pilot type programs, we can't do this. I mean, the funding's not there because ultimately, when you're doing such a low batch order, the engineering cost just drives the expense.