Under an agreement signed in March, the German transport authorities intend to jointly purchase 240 tram-trains which will allow costs saving.
The agreement was signed by Albtal-Verkehrs-Gesellschaft (AVG) which operates rail and bus services in the Karlsruhe area, Verkehrsbetriebe Karlsruhe (VBK) which is Karlsruhe municipal transport company, Erms-Neckar-Bahn AG (ENAG), Saarbahn Netz GmbH and Verkehrsverbunds Mittelsachsen (VMS), the public transport association for the region in Central Saxony.
Since July 2017, the parties are working together on the VDV TramTrain project. Currently, the specifications of the tram-trains are already and in autumn a tender will be launched for the acquisition of new vehicles.
“We save about one million euros per vehicle.This lower unit price results from the fact that the one-time costs for the development and approval of the standard vehicle can be distributed to a significantly higher number of vehicles,” said Thorsten Erlenkötter, the leader of VDV TramTrain project.
As the largest of the vehicle buyers, planning the purchase of 150 tram-trains, VBK and AVG will jointly carry out the award procedure on behalf of all project partners. The order quantity is still depending on the progress of the contract negotiations on transport services.
The companies expect that the first tram-train will enter services from 2025 onwards.
Together, the five companies have developed a standard vehicle, which is expected to roll off the production line of the future manufacturer about 240 times.
The teams worked together on the common vehicle features. In the regions of Karlsruhe, Saarbrücken, Chemnitz and Neckar-Alb, where the operators offer light rail services, all vehicles’ body is almost identical. The same concept is applying to the drive, failure and safety.
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