ITALY: Lombardia regional operator Ferrovienord has signed a €451·9m firm order for Hitachi Rail to supply 40 five-car and 10 four-car Caravaggio double-deck regional electric multiple-units.
Equipped for 3 kV DC operation, the 160 km/h EMUs are to be delivered from Hitachi Rail’s factories in Reggio Calabria and Napoli between October 2022 and October 2024.
The order announced on November 3 is the third to be placed under a 2018 framework agreement. Previous orders covered 30 four-car Caravaggio sets, of which 21 are now in revenue service; a further five put into service from September are designated Rock to reflect their transfer from Trenitalia. The region also ordered 20 five-car Caravaggio sets which are due to be delivered from December 2021.
The procurement forms part of the Lombardia region’s fleet renewal plan approved in 2017, which envisages investment of €1·96bn in a total of 222 new trains.
‘When the overall delivery plan is completed, the trains in service will be on average 12 years old, the lowest level ever reached in Lombardia’, said the region’s President Attilio Fontana. ‘This investment allows us to replace the oldest vehicles of the fleet inherited from the state. No other region has invested so much as we did from this perspective. The aim is to make rail transport more efficient. Offering brand new, state-of-the-art trains means improving passengers’ travel experience, and all the efforts made by the region are going in this direction.’
