THE INTERNATIONAL LIGHT RAIL MAGAZINE www.lrta.org www.tramnews.net DECEMBER 2013 NO. 912 GROUND-BREAKING TRANSIT IN TEL AVIV Light Rail Awards 2013: Special Review Sydney doubles CAF tram order Bursa opens city centre tramline Siemens’ vision of the future metro Kaliningrad Fast potential? £3.80 Russian city halting Linking high-speed tramway decline rail to urban transit rcp design enjoyed designing the tramways in Paris, Algiers, Le Mans, Angers... and even more the tram in Tours supplier of the year © photo léonard de serres the real life ! inspired by life www.myfrenchtram.com www.rcp.fr 2013-08-31 PUB tram and urban transit.indd 1 24/10/2013 17:22:42 500 CONTENTS The official journal of the Light Rail Transit Association DECEMBER 2013 Vol. 76 No. 912 www.tramnews.net EDITORIAL 506 EDITOR S imon Johnston Tel: +44 (0)1733 367601 E-mail: [email protected] 13 Orton Enterprise Centre, Bakewell Road, Peterborough PE2 6XU, UK ASSOCIATE EDITOR T ony Streeter E-mail: [email protected] WORLDWIDE EDITOR Michael Taplin Flat 1, 10 Hope Road, Shanklin, Isle of Wight PO37 6EA, UK. E-mail: [email protected] NEWS EDITOR John Symons 17 Whitmore Avenue, Werrington, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffs ST9 0LW, UK. E-mail: [email protected] SENIOR CONTRIBUTOR 516 Neil Pulling WORLDWIDE CONTRIBUTORS Aare Olander, Nikolai Semyonov, Sergei Tarkhov (CIS), NEWS 500 SYSTEMS FACTFILE: BIELEFELD 516 Mike Russell, Norman Bartlett, Thomas Wagner, Turkey’s Bursa opens new tramline; Sydney Neil Pulling reports on a German system Pedro Costa, Richard Felski, Jordi Ibanez (Europe), doubles CAF LRV order; Tiranë tramway undergoing continual development. Yoshiri Nogi (Japan), Anthony Bailey, Ian Hammond, Paul Nicholson (Australia), Vic Simons, Charles Lietwiler, plans revealed; Moscow looks to express Steve Morgan, Tom Swinney (US). tramway; Paris T7 opens. AUCKLAND’S RAIL FUTURE 522 PRODUCTION After years of work, New Zealand’s largest city Tel: +44 (0)1733 367604 E-mail: [email protected] TEL AVIV: BUILDING THE RED LINE 506 is set for major transport improvements. DESIGN Tel Aviv will soon have a state-of-the-art Debbie Nolan transport network. Project promoter NTA WORLDWIde REVIEW 524 ADVertiSING explains the developing scheme. Amiens tram construction contract COMMERCIAL ManaGER awarded; Mumbai monorail planned to V icky Binley Tel: +44 (0)1733 367602 E-mail: [email protected] WH Y HS2 NEEDS URBAN TRANSIT 512 open at the end of November; Gdansk Paul Dawkins, GHD’s Technical Leader ADVERTISING ManaGER chooses Jazz Duo vehicles from PESA. A ndy Adams – Rail, explores the case for linked urban Tel: +44 (0)1733 367605 E-mail: [email protected] transport and high-speed rail investment. MAILBOX 530 PublISHER High-floor vs. low-floor debates; Australian H oward Johnston NE W HOPE IN KALININGRAD 515 LRT progress and why statistics do matter. Tramways & Urban Transit is jointly published by the Recent years have seen the closure of many LRTA and LRTA Publishing on the third Friday of each routes in the Russian enclave – but new CLASSIC TRAMS: THE ANDES – PART 4 532 month preceding the cover date. low-floor trams could signal the end of decline. The final instalment – Bolivia and Peru. LRTA WEBSITE anD DIARY Brian Lomas E-mail: [email protected], [email protected] LRTA MEMBERSHIP (with TAUT subscription) Why high-speed rail can’t work in isolation Tramways & Urban Transit is sent free to all paid-up members of the Light Rail Transit Association. The debate over the implementation of high-speed rail is back in the You are welcome to join the LRTA. wider news again this month, and we have an interesting series of SUBSCRIPTIONS arguments from Paul Dawkins of GHD in this issue. His arguments echo LRTA Membership Secretary (Dept T06), many of those that have appeared on the pages of TAUT over the years and 38 Wolseley Road, Sale M33 7AU, UK. centre around the question of the ‘door to door’ journey. BACK ISSUES As the business case for the UK’s HS2 project comes under continued scrutiny, the Tel: +44 (0)1406 373070 more educated observers are not arguing about back gardens being taken up to lay PRINT AND DISTRIBUTION new lines or the amount of time saved between London and the nation’s other major Warners (Midlands) plc, The Maltings, West Street, Bourne, Lincs PE10 9PH, UK. cities. Instead they are focusing on delivering real value to the project by increasing Tel: +44 (0)1778 391000. the modal shift to public transport as a whole. This can only come through efficient, LRTA REGISTERED OFFICE modern – and importantly environmentally-friendly – systems that link the major c/o 138 Radnor Avenue, Welling, Kent DA16 2BY, UK. nodes on a national network and allow passengers real options on how to get to and Private company limited by guarantee, No. 5072319 from the 350km/h-plus trains of the future. in England and Wales. High-speed rail, whatever exact eventual form that this takes (in the UK and LRTA CHAIRMAN elsewhere), is a necessity to free up capacity on existing railways and also encourage Andrew Braddock genuine choice. But to make all of this work together as one seamless journey, you LRTA Deputy CHAIRMAN V ic Simons also need to take into account modal and ticketing integration to make life simpler LRTA PUBLISHING REGISTERED OFFICE: and easier for would-be passengers. If we make public transport good value for money, c/o 8 Berwick Place, Welwyn Garden City, Herts AL7 4TU, comfortable and easy, then the passengers will be there. UK. Private Limited Company, No. 06169422 Nations around the world are coming round to this realisation, but it cannot come in England and Wales. fast enough. For example, the long-delayed LRT project in Tel Aviv is now moving © LRTA Publishing 2013. forward quickly and the article from government-run project promoter NTA on page Articles are submitted on the understanding they may also later be used on our websites or other media. A contribution 506 outlines not only the problems from the scheme’s early days, but also the complex is accepted on the basis that its author is responsible for the challenges and choices around the design and construction phases. The timescales opinions expressed in it, and such opinions are not those of for the full nine-line LRT/BRT network are ambitious to say the least, but if the system LRTA Publishing or the LRTA. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be reproduced or transmitted in delivered as promised it will be truly transformational. Simon Johnston, Editor any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from COVER IMAGE: Construction of the main underground section of the Tel Aviv Red line LRT tunnels, at a the copyright owner. Multiple copying of the contents of the depth of up to 30 metres below street level, shows the immense scale of the project. NTA magazine without prior written approval is not permitted. www.tramnews.net . www.lrta.org DECEMBER 2013 / 499 News Bursa opens city circulator line Turkey’s fourth city welcomes low-floor route to join LRT system and metre-gauge heritage line he 6.5km (four-mile) city T3 uses a mixture of former circle modern tramline Istanbul (ex-German) two-axle T1 in the Turkish city Gotha trams and ex-Bochum of Bursa was officially Stadtbahn-M cars. Tinaugurated by Mayor Recep Bursa, located in northwestern Altepe on 12 October. Anatolia, 15km (nine miles) from The line will initially use four the Gulf of Gemlik inlet, and locally-built Durmazlar 28m the fourth most populous city five-section air-conditioned in Turkey also has the standard- 100% low floorSilkworm low- gauge Bursaray light rail system. floor trams (251-4); ten more are This operates in subway across on order. the city centre, using Siemens The single-track standard- and Bombardier LRVs, and two gauge line provides an anti- tram stops offer interchange with clockwise service only and was light rail stations. built by Spanish construction The Silkworm is Turkey’s first firm Comsa under a EUR8m domestically built low-floor contract, with 13 stops and a tram and uses Siemens electrical maintenance depot. It crosses the equipment; a prototype was Crowds gather around two Silkworm trams just before the opening of Bursa metre-gauge heritage tramline T3 unveiled at the Berlin Innotrans tramline T1 on 12 October. Bursa Municipality at Cumhuriyet Caddesi. exhibition in 2012. Moscow plans Inspiro trains now running in Warsaw express orbital tram network The inaugural passenger runs of the first SiemensInspiro Warsaw Inspiro 58 on the first day of trains for the Warsaw metro passenger service on metro line 1 on 6 October. took place on 6 October on the Witold Urbanowicz city’s single metro line. To mark the occasion, special announcements were made on the trains: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen. From today, the firstInspiro trains run on the tracks of Warsaw Metro – the Moskva’s latest trams are the partly most state-of-the-art trains low-floor KTM-23 from Ust-Katav; 4610 on route 50 on 13 October. S. Maksimov in Europe’. The trains have also run without any serious Following the re-election of problems or breakdowns aside Mayor Sergei Sobyanin on 8 from a simple door failure on September, Russian business one of the first days which publication Vedomsti reports caused a ten-minute delay in plans are being developed for the morning peak. an extensive network of orbital The first six-carInspiro train literally taken apart in Below left: The full line-up of Warsaw express tramways estimated to train arrived from Vienna Warsaw.