CANADA: Calgary Transit announced on September 11 that it had ordered 60 light rail vehicles from Siemens for its expanding CTrain network, at a total cost of C$200m. The first of the S200 series cars is expected to arrive from the company’s Sacramento plant in August 2015, with deliveries to be completed by the end of 2016.
The city’s traditional supplier won the contract following an international tender, being selected ahead of bids from Hyundai Rotem, Kinki Sharyo and CAF in a procurement process that began in December 2012. Mayor Naheed Nenshi said he was ‘very excited’ that the City Council had authorised the extra cars, which would ‘ease overcrowding and increase comfort and reliability’.
With the CTrain network carrying more than 300 000 passengers a day, Calgary Transit has been extending platforms to accommodate longer trains for some time, but needed to put in place the funding for the additional rolling stock. The City Council had allocated C$67m for new vehicles, which will be augmented by C$133m from the province of Alberta’s Green Trip programme.
Calgary Transit expects to use 35 of the new LRVs to increase capacity, allowing the introduction of four-car trains on the busiest route between Crowfoot and Somerset. The remaining 25 will start the replacement of the city’s oldest U2 cars which date from 1981. The city’s Route Ahead strategic plan envisages that the CTrain fleet will need to grow from 192 to around 300 LRVs over the next 30 years.
Unlike the existing steel-bodied cars, the S200s will have bonded aluminium side panels. The windows will be triple-glazed to reduce energy losses, along with improved air conditioning and regenerative braking. There will also be a glazed partition behind the cabs rather than a solid screen. Each car will offer wheelchair accessibility from every door, and there will be a partial return to transverse seating, following customer feedback about the use of all longitudinal seating on the most recent build of SD160NG cars supplied in 2010-12.
