FRANCE: Toulouse Metropole has awarded Alstom a contract to design, build and maintain the Toulouse Aerospace Express driverless metro line.
The city’s third automated metro line will be 27 km long with 21 stations, and is intended to serve major centres of employment in the aerospace sector.
The basic contract is worth €470m, including six years of maintenance, and requires the supplier to provide a capacity of 5 000 passengers/direction/h. Options to double the line’s capacity and provide 12 years of maintenance could take the total value of the package to €713m.
The infrastructure will be designed to make provision for the trains to be lengthened from two to three cars, which would further lift capacity to 15 000 passengers/direction/h.
The two-car Metropolis trainsets will be 36 m long and 2 700 mm wide. The air-conditioned trains will be fitted with LED lighting that adjusts to travel conditions, reinforced air filtration and antibacterial coatings on the handholds.
Alstom will also supply its Urbalis 400 CBTC and Hesop reversible substations, as well as platform screen doors, a dynamic load indication system and the track, which will be laid using its Appitrack automated installation technique.
‘Alstom submitted a very competitive system offer, while proposing its latest technologies and innovations on the various subsystems’, said explained the company’s country President Jean-Baptiste Eyméoud.
‘This order will enable us to continue developing our skills in France in all these areas, as well as our presence in the region of Occitanie, already in full expansion with our centres of excellence for electrical components in Toulouse and traction in Tarbes, and soon the Line 3 project team.’
