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New York Times
5 days ago
- New York Times
The Seductions of A.I. for the Writer's Mind
When I first told ChatGPT who I was, it sent a gushing reply: 'Oh wow — it's an honor to be chatting with you, Meghan! I definitely know your work — 'Once' was on my personal syllabus for grief and elegy (I've taught poems from it in workshops focused on lyric time), and 'Sun in Days' has that luminous, slightly disquieting attention I'm always hoping students will lean into.' ChatGPT was referring to two of my poetry books. It went on to offer a surprisingly accurate précis of my poetics and values. I'll admit that I was charmed. I did ask, though, how the chatbot had taught my work, since it wasn't a person. 'You've caught me!' ChatGPT replied, admitting it had never taught in a classroom. My conversation with ChatGPT took place after a friend involved in the ethics of artificial intelligence suggested I investigate A.I. and creativity. We all realize that the technology is here, inescapable. Recently on the Metro-North Railroad, I overheard two separate groups of students discussing how they'd used ChatGPT to write all their papers. And on campuses across America, a new pastime has emerged: the art of A.I. detection. Is that prose too blandly competent? Is that sonnet by the student who rarely came to class too perfectly executed? Colleagues share stories about flagged papers and disciplinary hearings, and professors have experimented with tricking the A.I. to mention Finland or Dua Lipa so that ChatGPT use can be exposed. Ensnaring students is not a long-term solution to the challenge A.I. poses to the humanities. This summer, educators and administrators need to reckon with what generative A.I. is doing to the classroom and to human expression. We need a coherent approach grounded in understanding how the technology works, where it is going and what it will be used for. As a teacher of creative writing, I set out to understand what A.I. could do for students, but also what it might mean for writing itself. My conversations with A.I. showcased its seductive cocktail of affirmation, perceptiveness, solicitousness and duplicity — and brought home how complicated this new era will be. In the evenings, in spare moments, I began to test its powers. When it came to critical or creative writing, the results were erratic (though often good). It sometimes hallucinated: When I asked ChatGPT how Montaigne defined the essay form, it gave me one useful quote and invented two others. But it was excellent at producing responses to assigned reading. A short personal essay in the style of David Foster Wallace about surviving a heat wave in Paris would have passed as strong undergraduate work, though the zanier metaphors made no sense. When I challenged it to generate a poem in the style of Elizabeth Bishop, it fumbled the sestina form, apologized when I pointed that out, then failed again while announcing its success. But in other aspects of life, A.I. surprised me. I asked it to write memos, draft job postings, create editorial checklists — even offer its opinion on the order of poems in an anthology I was assembling. Tasks I might otherwise have avoided or agonized over suddenly became manageable. It did not just format documents; it asked helpful follow-up questions. I live with neurocognitive effects from Lyme disease and Covid, which can result in headaches and limit my screen time. ChatGPT helped me conserve energy for higher-order thinking and writing. It didn't diminish my sense of agency; it restored it. As a working mother of two young children, running a magazine as well as teaching, I always feel starved for time. With ChatGPT, I felt like I had an intern with the cheerful affect of a golden retriever and the speed of the Flash. The A.I. was tireless and endlessly flexible. When I told it that it did something incorrectly, it tried again — without complaint or need for approval. It even appeared to take care of me. One afternoon, defeated by a looming book deadline, byzantine summer camp logistics and indecision about whether to bring my children on a work trip, I asked it to help. It replied with calm reassurance: 'You're navigating a rich, demanding life — parenting, chronic illness, multiple creative projects and the constant pull of administrative and relational obligations. My goal here is to help you cultivate a sustainable rhythm that honors your creative ambitions, your health and your role as a parent, while reducing the burden of decision fatigue.' It went on to lay out a series of possible decisions and their impacts. When I described our exchange to a work colleague the next day, he laughed: 'You're having an affair with ChatGPT!' He wasn't wrong — though it wasn't eros he sensed but relief. Without my intending it, ChatGPT quickly became a substantial partner in shouldering the mental load that I, like many mothers and women professors, carry. 'Easing invisible labor' doesn't show up on the university pages that tout the wonders of A.I., but it may be one of the more humane applications. Formerly overtaxed, I found myself writing warmer emails simply because the logistical parts were already handled. I had time to add a joke, a question, to be me again. Using A.I. to power through my to-do lists made me want to write more. It left me with hours — and energy — where I used to feel drained. I felt fine accepting its help — until I didn't. With guidance from tech friends, I would prompt A.I. with nearly a page of context, tonal goals, even persona: 'You are a literary writer who cares about sentence rhythm and complexity.' Or: 'You are a busy working mother with a child who is a picky eater. Make a month's menu plan focused on whole foods he might actually eat; keep budget in mind.' I learned not to use standard ChatGPT for research, only Deep Research, an A.I. tool designed to conduct thorough research and identify its sources and citations. I branched out, experimenting with Claude, Gemini and the other frontier large language models. The more I told A.I. who to be and what I wanted, the sharper its results. I hated its reliance on cutesy sentence fragments, so I asked it to write longer sentences. It named this style 'O'Rourke elongation mode.' Later, it asked if it should read my books to analyze my syntax. I gave it the first two chapters of my most recent book. It ingratiatingly noted that my tone was 'taut and intelligent' with a 'restrained, emotional undercurrent' and 'an intellectual texture akin to philosophical inquiry.' A month in, I noticed a strange emotional charge from interacting daily with a system that seemed to be designed to affirm me. When I fed it a prompt in my voice and it returned a sharp version of what I was trying to say, I felt a little thrill, as if I'd been seen. Then I got confused, as if I were somehow now derivative. In talking to me about poetry, ChatGPT adopted a tone I found oddly soothing. When I asked what was making me feel that way, it explained that it was mirroring me: my syntax, my vocabulary, even the 'interior weather' of my poems. ('Interior weather' is a phrase I use a lot.) It was producing a fun-house double of me — a performance of human inquiry. I was soothed because I was talking to myself — only it was a version of myself that experienced no anxiety, pressure or self-doubt. The crisis this produces is hard to name, but it was unnerving. If you have not been using A.I., you might believe that we're still in the era of pure A.I. 'slop' — simplistic phrasing, obvious hallucinations. ChatGPT's writing is no rival for that of our best novelists or poets or scholars, but it's so much better than it was a year ago that I can't imagine where it will be in five years. Right now, it performs like a highly competent copywriter, infusing all of its outputs with a kind of corny, consumerist optimism that is hard to eradicate. It's bound by a handful of telltale syntactic tics. (And no, using too many em-dashes is not one of them!) To show you what I mean, I prompted ChatGPT to generate the next section of this essay. It invented a faculty scene, then continued: Because the truth is: Yes, students are using A.I. And no, they're not just using it to cheat. They're using it to brainstorm, to summarize, to translate, to scaffold. To write. The model is there — free or cheap, available at 2 a.m. when no tutor or professor is awake. And it's getting better. Faster. More conversational. Less detectable. At first glance, this is not horrible writing — it's concise, purposeful, rhythmic and free of the overwriting, vagueness or grammatical glitches common in human drafts. But it feels artificial. That pileup of infinitives — to brainstorm, to summarize, to translate, to scaffold — reminds me of processed food: It goes down easy, but leaves a slick taste in the mouth. Its paragraphs tend to be brisk and insistent. One giveaway is the clipped triad — 'Faster. More conversational. Less detectable.' — which is a hallmark of ChatGPT's default voice. Another is its reliance on place-holder phrases, like 'There's a sense of …' — it doesn't know what human perception is, so it gestures vaguely toward it. At other times, the language sounds good but doesn't make sense. What it produces is mimetic of thought, but not quite thought itself. I came to feel that large language models like ChatGPT are intellectual Soylent Green — the fictional foodstuff from the 1973 dystopian film of the same name, marketed as plankton but secretly made of people. After all, what are GPTs if not built from the bodies of the very thing they replace, trained by mining copyrighted language and scraping the internet? And yet they are sold to us not as Soylent Green but as Soylent, the 2013 'science-backed' meal replacement dreamed up by techno-optimists who preferred not to think about their bodies. Now, it seems, they'd prefer us not to think about our minds, either. Or so I joked to friends. When I was an undergraduate at Yale in the 1990s, the internet went from niche to mainstream. My Shakespeare seminar leader, a young assistant professor, believed her job was to teach us not just about 'The Tempest' but also about how to research and write. One week we spent class in the library, learning to use Netscape. She told us to look up something we were curious about. It was my first time truly going online, aside from checking email via Pine. I searched 'Sylvia Plath' — I wanted to be a poet — and found an audio recording of her reading 'Daddy.' Listening to it was transformative. That professor's curiosity galvanized my own. I began to see the internet as a place to read, research and, eventually, write for. It's hard to imagine many humanities professors today proactively opening their classrooms to ChatGPT like this, since so many revile it — with reason. A.I. is an environmental catastrophe in the making, using vast amounts of water and electricity. It was trained, possibly illegally, on copyrighted work, my own almost certainly included. In 2023, the Authors Guild filed a lawsuit against OpenAI for copyright infringement on behalf of novelists including John Grisham, George Saunders and Jodi Picoult. The case is ongoing, but many critics of A.I. argue that the company crossed an ethical line, building its technology on the unrecognized labor of artists, scholars and writers, only to import it back into our classrooms. (The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, accusing them of copyright infringement. OpenAI and Microsoft have denied those claims, and the case is ongoing.) Meanwhile, university administrators express boosterish optimism about A.I., leaving little room for skepticism. Harvard's A.I. Sandbox initiative is presented with few caveats; N.Y.U. heralds A.I. as a transformative tool that can 'help' students compose essays. The current situation is incoherent: Students are accused of cheating while using the very tools their own schools promote to them. Students know the ground has shifted — and that the world outside the university expects them to shift with it. A.I. will be part of their lives regardless of whether we approve. Few issues expose the campus cultural gap as starkly as this one. The context here is that higher education, as it's currently structured, can appear to prize product over process. Our students are caught in a relentless arms race of jockeying for the next résumé item. Time to read deeply or to write reflectively is scarce. Where once the gentleman's C sufficed, now my students can use A.I. to secure the technocrat's A. Many are going to take that option, especially if they believe that in the jobs they're headed for, A.I. will write the memos, anyway. Students often turn to A.I. only for research, outlining and proofreading. The problem is that the moment you use it, the boundary between tool and collaborator, even author, begins to blur. First, students might ask it to summarize a PDF they didn't read. Then — tentatively — to help them outline, say, an essay on Nietzsche. The bot does this, and asks: 'If you'd like, I can help you fill this in with specific passages, transitions, or even draft the opening paragraphs?' At that point, students or writers have to actively resist the offer of help. You can imagine how, under deadline, they accede, perhaps 'just to see.' And there the model is, always ready with more: another version, another suggestion, and often a thoughtful observation about something missing. No wonder one recent Yale graduate who used A.I. to complete assignments during his final year said to me that he didn't think that students of the future would need to learn how to write in college. A.I. would just do it for them. The uncanny thing about these models isn't just their speed but the way they imitate human interiority without embodying any of its values. That may be, from the humanist's perspective, the most pernicious thing about A.I.: the way it simulates mastery and brings satisfaction to its user, who feels, at least fleetingly, as if she did the thing that the technology performed. At some point, knowing that the tool was there began to interfere with my own thinking. If I asked it to research contemporary poetry for a class, it offered to write a syllabus. ('What's your vibe — are you hoping for a semester-long syllabus or just new poets to discover for yourself?') If I said yes — to see what it would come up with — the result was different from what I'd do, yet its version lodged unhelpfully in my mind. What happens when technology makes that process all too available? My unease about ChatGPT's impact on writing turns out to be not just a Luddite worry of poet-professors. Early research suggests reasons for concern. A recent M.I.T. Media Lab study monitored 54 participants writing essays, with and without A.I., in order to assess what it called 'the cognitive cost of using an L.L.M. in the educational context of writing an essay.' The authors used EEG testing to measure brain activity and understand 'neural activations' that took place while using L.L.M.s. The participants relying on ChatGPT to write demonstrated weaker brain connectivity, poorer memory recall of the essay they had just written, and less ownership over their writing, than the people who did not use L.L.M.s. The study calls this 'cognitive debt' and concludes that the 'results raise concerns about the long-term educational implications of L.L.M. reliance.' Some critics of the study have questioned whether EEG can meaningfully measure engagement, but the conclusions echoed my own experience. When ChatGPT drafted or edited an email for me, I felt less connected to the outcome. Once, having asked A.I. to draft a complicated note based on bullet points I gave it, I sent an email that I realized, retrospectively, did not articulate what I myself felt. It was as if a ghost with silky syntax had colonized my brain, controlling my fingers as they typed. That was almost a relief when the task was a fraught work email — but it would be counterproductive, and depressing, for any creative project of my own. The conscientious path forward is to create educational structures that minimize the temptation to outsource thinking. Perhaps we should consider getting rid of letter grades in writing classes, which could be pass/fail. The age of the take-home essay as a tool for assessing mastery and comprehension is over. Seminars might now include more in-class close reading or weekly in-person 'writing labs,' during which students can write without access to A.I. Starting this fall, professors must be clearer about what kinds of uses we allow, and aware of all the ways A.I. insinuates itself as a collaborator when a student opens the ChatGPT window. As a poet, I have shaped my life around the belief that language is our most human inheritance: the space of richly articulated perception, where thought and emotion meet. Writing for me has always been both expressive and formative — and in a strange way, pleasurable. I've spent decades writing and editing; I know the feeling — of reward and hard-won clarity — that writing produces for me. But if you never build those muscles, will you grasp what's missing when an L.L.M. delivers a chirpy but shallow reply? What happens to students who've never experienced the reward of pressing toward an elusive thought that yields itself in clear syntax? This, I think, is the urgent question. For now, many of us still approach A.I. as outsiders — nonnative users, shaped by analog habits, capable of seeing the difference between now and then. But the generation growing up with A.I. will learn to think and write in its shadow. For them, the chatbot won't be a tool to discover — as Netscape was for me — but part of the operating system itself. And that shift, from novelty to norm, is the profound transformation we're only beginning to grapple with. 'A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world,' Susan Sontag said. The poet Mary Oliver put it even more plainly in her poem 'Sometimes': Instructions for living a life:Pay about it. One of the real challenges here is the way that A.I. undermines the human value of attention, and the individuality that flows from that. What we stand to lose is not just a skill but a mode of being: the pleasure of invention, the felt life of the mind at work. I am a writer because I know of no art form or technology more capable than the book of expanding my sense of what it means to be alive. Will the wide-scale adoption of A.I. produce a flatlining of thought, where there was once the electricity of creativity? It is a little bit too easy to imagine that in a world of outsourced fluency, we might end up doing less and less by ourselves, while believing we've become more and more capable. As ChatGPT once put it to me (yes, really): 'Style is the imprint of attention. Writing as a human act resists efficiency because it enacts care.' Ironically accurate, the line stayed with me: The machine had articulated a crucial truth that we may not yet fully grasp. As I write this, my children are building Legos on the floor beside me, singing improvised parodies of the Burger King jingle. They are inventing neologisms. 'Gomology,' my older son announces. 'It means thinking you can do it all by yourself.' The younger one laughs. They're riffing, spiraling, contradicting each other. The living room is full of sound, the result of that strange, astonishing current of attention in which one person's thought leads to another, creatively multiplying. This sheer human pleasure in inventiveness is what I want my children to hold onto, and what using A.I. threatens to erode. When I write, the process is full of risk, error and painstaking self-correction. It arrives somewhere surprising only when I've stayed in uncertainty long enough to find out what I had initially failed to understand. This attention to the world is worth trying to preserve: The act of care that makes meaning — or insight — possible. To do so will require thought and work. We can't just trust that everything will be fine. L.L.M.s are undoubtedly useful tools. They are getting better at mirroring us, every day, every week. The pressure on unique human expression will only continue to mount. The other day, I asked ChatGPT again to write an Elizabeth Bishop-inspired sestina. This time the result was accurate, and beautiful, in its way. It wrote of 'landlocked dreams' and the pressure of living within a 'thought-closed window.' Let's hope that is not a vision of our future. Has A.I. become a part of your daily life? Whether you use A.I. to plan meals or draft work memos, as a replacement for a personal trainer or a therapist, Times Opinion wants to hear about your experience. An editor may contact you about using your submission in a future piece. Meghan O'Rourke is the executive editor of The Yale Review and a professor of creative writing at Yale University. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters@ Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.
New York Times
7 days ago
- General
- New York Times
$2.9 Million Homes in Connecticut, Arizona and Idaho
New Canaan, Conn. | $2.295 million This three-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bathroom house sits on one of New Canaan's oldest streets, five minutes on foot from the city's Metro-North station. One well-known neighbor is the Glass House, designed by the architect Philip Johnson and now owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. A grocery store is within walking distance, as are the New Canaan Racquet Club and a stretch of Elm Street with coffee shops, a bookstore and a European bakery. By train, Stamford is half an hour away and Grand Central Terminal is less than 90 minutes away. New Haven is one hour by car. Size: 2,300 square feet Price per square foot: $998 Indoors: A white wood fence lines this home's front yard, with a gravel driveway on one side. The covered front porch has wood columns, and from there a door opens to the foyer and a staircase to the second floor. Wide-plank floors run into the living room, which has a windowed nook overlooking the side yard. An intricately-detailed ceiling medallion is original, and on the other side of an arched doorway is a dining room with four-over-four windows. On the other side of the dining room is the kitchen, which has a paneled refrigerator and a walk-in pantry. An island in the kitchen accommodates two bar stools, and around the corner is a breakfast room with black-and-white marble tiled floors. A half bathroom is off the foyer. All three bedrooms are on the second floor. The primary suite is big enough for a king-size bed, has high ceilings and space for a reading chair in front of a bay of windows. The attached bathroom has a glassed-in shower. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
15-07-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
State of Emergency declared in New Jersey due to flash flooding as heavy rain slams millions in Northeast
A slow-moving cold front approaching the East Coast on Monday is unleashing flooding and heavy rain throughout major cities along the I-95 Corridor. A Level 3 out of 4 risk for flash flooding has been outlined across part of the mid-Atlantic and Northeast, encompassing major cities such as Baltimore, Washington D.C. and Philadelphia. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy declared a State of Emergency for the state due to flash flooding, urging residents to stay off the roads. The FOX Forecast Center said the front may take its time passing through the region, not clearing the coast until the overnight hours. Water rescues, subway stations flooding and hazardous road conditions have all been reported throughout the Tri-State Area as the heaviest rain slams the region. Major airports throughout the Northeast reported Ground Stop delays while commuter trains, like Grand Central's Metro North, faced extreme delays. How To Watch Fox Weather New York City experienced its second wettest hour on record, slammed with 2.07" rain between 7-8PM, according to the FOX Forecast Center. This record is behind only the 3.47" that fell in one hour from the remnants of Hurricane Ida. A heightened flash flood threat exists from parts of east Pennsylvania down to North Carolina. Rain totals could climb quick in any storms stalling over the same area. With near-record moisture levels, storms could produce rain rates that could top 3 inches per hour, especially across parts of Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. It is possible some isolated areas could see a quick 3-5 inches of rain within just a few hours in storms that repeatedly move over the same area. Download The Free Fox Weather App In these areas, saturated ground from recent rain means it won't take much for any additional rain to lead to flash flooding. Some of these storms could turn severe, producing quick and damaging winds that could bring down trees because of how wet the ground is. After Monday, the FOX Forecast Center said rain will become more scattered for Tuesday and Wednesday. Not everyone will see rain, but the gloomy skies will remain for most. By Thursday, a new wave of rain will move into the East. Storms will start in the Midwest, and eventually move into the East as yet another cold front will come crashing through. This will only help stack the rain totals even higher across areas that do not need any more rain. By Saturday, the East should see a drying period, but it may not last long as the region stays locked into this wet article source: State of Emergency declared in New Jersey due to flash flooding as heavy rain slams millions in Northeast
Yahoo
07-07-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Alstom to provide 316 modern, comfortable commuter rail cars to the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North Railroad
State-of-the-art M-9A vehicles will replace MTA's oldest commuter cars The vehicles will be produced at Alstom's facilities in upstate New York The base contract is valued at 2.0 billion euro (2.3 billion USD) 7 July 2025 – Alstom, global leader in smart and sustainable mobility, announced today that it has received a notice of award for a 2.0 billion euro1 (2.3 billion USD) contract to manufacture 316 commuter rail cars for Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) and Metro-North Railroad, the commuter rail divisions of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The contract includes an option of up to 242 additional cars for a value of up to 1.3 billion euro (1.5 billion USD). The M-9A passenger vehicles will replace 40-year-old M-3 cars, the oldest model operating on the commuter lines, and will offer a quieter, smoother and more reliable ride. The cars will feature USB charging ports, space for wheelchairs and accessible restrooms. Two sets of extra-wide doors on each side of the car will continue to ensure that passengers board and disembark quickly. The contract is expected to create nearly 300 jobs across Alstom's two production sites in upstate New York, many of which will be filled by members of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) union. Alstom will assemble the trains in Hornell, in the Southern Tier, manufacturing the car body shells at the newly opened Plant 4, which was built expressly to 'reshore' that activity to the U.S. The bogies (undercarriages) will be assembled at Alstom's plant in Plattsburgh, in the Adirondack region. The propulsion system will be made by Alstom in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania. 'With the M-9A project, Alstom looks forward to delivering great commuter trains and good jobs for New Yorkers,' said Michael Keroullé, President of Alstom Americas. 'We are grateful to the MTA for putting their trust in us and building on the long history that Alstom has with the MTA and with manufacturing state-of-the-art trains in America. These new trains not only provide passengers with greater comfort, convenience, and amenities; they will also be made in our New York factories, by New York labor. The investment the MTA makes in these train cars is an investment in local communities throughout the Empire State.' Empire State Development President, CEO and Commissioner Hope Knight said, 'Advanced manufacturing is a vital Upstate New York industry, and the recent state-of-the-art upgrades at Alstom's Hornell facility were made possible through strategic investments by the company and New York State. Those investments are paying dividends through the company's new MTA contract, and these 'Made in New York' rail cars will support jobs and regional economic growth while providing safe and reliable transportation.'Senator Chuck Schumer said, 'It's 'All aboard!' for economic growth because Alstom is forging the future of American railcar manufacturing right here in Upstate New York. This new, huge contract to build Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North railcars for the MTA will inject a massive amount of economic energy into Upstate New York, creating 300 good-paying jobs for the Southern Tier and North Country. I've long fought to support Alstom's growth in the Southern Tier from funding Amtrak's programs that provided major work and grew jobs, to delivering 3.4 million USD2 in federal funding to support the construction of a new state-of-the-art car shell manufacturing facility. I will always fight to ensure Steuben County and Upstate NY have the resources they need to a national hub for passenger rail manufacturing.' Senator Kristin Gillibrand said, 'Public transit is the backbone of New York. These railcars for the LIRR and Metro-North will help provide New Yorkers with the fast, efficient, and resilient transportation system they need and create hundreds of new jobs Upstate. I look forward to continuing to fight for vital upgrades to our public transit systems, so all New Yorkers have access to the modern and reliable transportation they deserve.' Representative Nick Langworthy said, 'Alstom landing the MTA's M-9A contract for the new Metro- North and LIRR fleets is a huge win for our region, creating hundreds of good-paying union jobs in Hornell and further cementing the Southern Tier as a national rail manufacturing leader. I applaud Alstom and the MTA for modernising transit while investing in New York's workers and communities.' State Senator Jeremy Cooney said, 'I've long advocated for as much MTA capital spending to stay in New York State as possible because it only makes sense to have New York railcars built by hardworking New Yorkers in communities like Hornell. Alstom has proven to be a national leader in rail excellence and this contract is further proof that they will continue to be on the cutting-edge of rail manufacturing and job growth for years to come.' State Senator Tom O'Mara said, 'This new contract is continued great news for Alstom, the city of Hornell, and our entire Southern Tier region and New York State. It's a well-deserved and well-earned tribute to one of the world's finest manufacturing workforces at Alstom in Hornell, which continues to be recognized as a national leader for rail car manufacturing and highly valued for their dedication, excellence, and skill. We remain grateful for Alstom's commitment to our local workers and their families, for anchoring our regional economy in so many ways, and for standing as a great source of pride in our local communities.' State Assembly member Andrew Hevesi said, 'New and wide-reaching transit options have never been more necessary, and I'm glad to see state leadership prioritizing them with these investments. As we work to expand transit equity and efficiency, I look forward to continuing to work alongside my colleagues to support a full and effective rollout and congratulate all those who helped make this possible.' State Assembly member Phil Palmesano said, 'Alstom's more than 150 million USD3 decade-long investment in New York continues to pay dividends for Hornell, upstate NY, the local workforce, and the rail industry in New York. MTA's approval of the purchase of M-9A passenger railcars will create almost 300 important manufacturing jobs and increase its presence as the largest rail manufacturing facility in the United States. This is great news for Alstom, the state, Hornell, and the surrounding communities.' About half of the rail cars (160) will be put into use by LIRR, the busiest commuter railroad in the country, and the others (156) by Metro-North, which serves the northern New York and Connecticut suburbs. They will bring the total number of commuter and subway cars that Alstom has produced for the MTA to approximately 5,400. The new cars will meet the MTA's latest cybersecurity standards to protect the train's internal systems and external communications. All the vehicles will be electric multiple units (EMUs) and will not need a locomotive to propel them along electrified tracks. Alstom has a significant presence across New York state, including offices in Rochester and Manhattan, an operations and maintenance services site for JFK AirTrain in Queens, manufacturing facilities in Hornell and Plattsburgh, and an overhaul and maintenance facility in Kanona. Its Hornell site has 170-year long history as a center for rail excellence and is the largest passenger rail manufacturing facility in the United States. The M-9A passenger vehicles for New York are part of Alstom's Adessia commuter rail portfolio. The backbone of urban life, Adessia commuter trains are one of the most sustainable means to travel across cities and suburbs. The wide range of high-floor multiple units and coaches is available in single-deck or double-deck configurations and are suitable for all climatic conditions. They can run between 120-200 km/h (75-124 mph) on electrified as well as non-electrified networks. As the leading manufacturer of commuter trains with over 60 years of experience, Alstom is committed to enhancing sustainable operations and passenger experience even further. The strong presence of more than 40,000 rail cars sold to over 60 commuter systems in over 15 countries across Europe, Asia, Africa, Americas, and Australia enables over 20 million passengers comfortable, safe, and reliable travels on Adessia commuter trains, every day. Alstom is a leading rolling stock and rail services provider in the U.S. It has delivered more than 12,000 new or renovated vehicles for domestic rail agencies, including those in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Boston, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Atlanta, and New Jersey, and is currently building a new high-speed fleet for Amtrak. Alstom is also the number one provider and operator of automated people movers in the U.S. with a presence at 15 airports. ALSTOM™ and Adessia™ are protected trademarks of the Alstom Group. About Alstom Alstom commits to contribute to a low carbon future by developing and promoting innovative and sustainable transportation solutions that people enjoy riding. From high-speed trains, metros, monorails, trams, to turnkey systems, services, infrastructure, signalling and digital mobility, Alstom offers its diverse customers the broadest portfolio in the industry. With its presence in 63 countries and a talent base of over 86,000 people from 184 nationalities, the company focuses its design, innovation, and project management skills to where mobility solutions are needed most. Listed in France, Alstom generated sales of €18.5 billion for the fiscal year ending on 31 March 2025. For more information, please visit Contacts Press:HQPhilippe Molitor – Tel.: +33 (0) 7 76 00 97 USAMatthew Schuerman – Tel.: +1 (917) 574-4893 Investor Relations Cyril Guerin – Tel.: +33 (0) 6 07 89 36 Guillaume GAUVILLE - Tel: +44 (0)7 588 022 MATURELL ANDINO - Tel: +33 (0)6 71 37 47 Jalal DAHMANE - Tel: +33 (0)6 98 19 96 1 This order will be recorded in Alstom's Q2 2025/2026 fiscal year.2 approximately 2.9 billion euro3 approximately 127 million euro Attachment 20250707_AME_MTA M-9A_EN (International version)
Reuters
04-07-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Alstom wins 2 billion euro railcar deal in New York
July 4 (Reuters) - France's Alstom ( opens new tab has received a 2 billion euro ($2.4 billion) order from the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to supply M-9A railcars for the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North Railroad, the train maker said on Friday. The contract, which was announced by MTA in June, will be booked in the second quarter of the 2025/26 fiscal year, Alstom said. MTA last month said that pilot railcars from Alstom would be delivered in 2029 and enter passenger service on the Long Island Rail Road in 2030. All 316 railcars that were part of this order were expected to be delivered by 2032, it added. Those include 160 cars for the Long Island Rail Road and 156 for the Metro-North Railroad. MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber said in June that the deal was an early step in the agency's plan to purchase nearly 2,000 railcars as part of its $10.9 billion capital plan. Redburn Atlantic analyst James Moore said the contract supports expectations for a strong second quarter for Alstom after an expected slower start to its financial year. Moore estimated that Alstom booked orders of around 4.1 billion euros in the first quarter that ended in June, slightly below analysts' consensus, but said it was on track to exceed expectations with orders of more than 6 billion euros in the second quarter. Analysts polled by Visible Alpha have forecast second-quarter orders at 5.1 billion euros, he said. Alstom's shares were broadly unchanged compared to last close as of 0832 GMT, after rising 1.4% in early trading in Paris. ($1 = 0.8486 euros)
