Melbourne's Yarra Trams has leased five low-floor light rail vehicles from the French city of Mulhouse to increase capacity on its East Brunswick - St Kilda route. The first of the Alstom Citadis cars arrived at the Port of Melbourne on February 15, and all five are due to be in service by September. They will remain in Australia until December 2011.
Santiago Metro has exercised an option for 36 cars under its contract with CAF (RG 11.07 p679), which is now to supply the Chilean capital with a total of 20 nine-car trainsets.
Ireland's Railway Procurement Agency has made a formal application for powers to build the Citywest extension of the Luas Red Line in Dublin. Developers will contribute through a PPP to the 4·2 km branch from Belgard to Saggart which is expected to open in 2010.
The National Economic & Development Authority of the Phillipines has agreed terms with Universal LRT Corp for the construction of the $1·12bn Manila MRT Line 7, which will run for 23 km from Tala station at San Jose del Monte in Bulacan to link with Line 3 at North station. Construction is scheduled to take three years.
CAF is to supply an additional eight six-car trainsets for Roma metro, an option to a contract signed in 2002.
A one-station extension of Madrid metro Line 7 to Hospital de Henares opened on February 11. The three-level station has 90 m long platforms located at a depth of 22 m below the surface.
Having secured EIB funding for Phase 2 of the BursaRay light rail network (RG 11.02 p707), Bursa Metropolitan Municipality has called tenders for the supply of 30 LRVs with options for 28 more. They must be compatible with the city's Siemens B80 cars.
Test running in fully-automated mode is taking place on a 6·1 km stretch of metro Line 3 in Nürnberg. Revenue operations are expected to begin in June, albeit to an interim timetable. Nürnberg will be the first metro system in the world to allow automated and manually-driven trains to share the same infrastructure. The project to integrate the two operations, known as Rubin, has already experienced severe delays (RG 5.07 p260).
Construction of Line 1 of the Mumbai metro began on February 8, more than 18 months after the ceremonial laying of a foundation stone. The 11 km Versova - Andheri - Ghatkoper route is being built under a 35-year BOT concession between Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority and a consortium led by Reliance Energy.
A 3 km automated peoplemover began operating in Perugia on January 29. The cable-hauled system, known as the Red Line because of the red guideway that supports it, serves seven stations. The fleet of 25 cars link Pian di Massiano and Pincetto at 1 min intervals.
On January 28 PESA Bydgoszcz formally handed over the first of 10 Type 122N trams ordered by Lódz operator MPK. An onboard battery will enable the trams to run for up to 50 m without external power, allowing them to clear junctions in the event of a power failure.
During January the Romanian city of Iasi took delivery of 31 metre-gauge trams bought second-hand from Stuttgart. The German city ceased metre-gauge tram operations in December, completing its conversion to standard gauge, apart from rack Line 10.
On February 5 Metrovagonmash was awarded a contract to supply 5 additional three-car trainsets for the Kazan metro.
