Turkish Railways (TCDD) has selected Siemens as winner of the contract for the construction of the 10 new high-speed trains. The bid submitted by German rolling stock manufacturer was of EUR 349 million. Beside construction and delivery of the 10 new high-speed trains, the contract also includes the delivery of a train simulator, maintenance of trains and delivery of spares.
The new high-speed trains will be delivered as of March 2019 and will be placed into services as of 2021. French rolling stock manufacturer Alstom has also submitted a bid in the tender (TCDD has not disclosed the value of Alstom’s bid), as well as Spanish rolling stock manufacturer, CAF, whose bid has been valued at EUR 273 million.
TCDD says that they hardly cope with the increasing demand of high-speed trains, as their fleet of such vehicles is still limited. If the new high-speed railway, Ankara-Sivas, enters commercial service at the end of 2018 (as planned), then the limited fleet of high-speed trains of the Turkish operator will pose serious problems in ensuring the traffic flow.
If you ask yourselves why Siemens won the contract although its offer was bigger than that of CAF, the answer comes from an error in the Turkish legislation on public procurement, more precisely regarding the submitted documentation.
Thus, although there has been a clear difference between the offers of the two competitors, CAF’s offer has been rejected as the Spanish company lacked a significant document in the tender (however, TCDD has not clarified what document has been omitted by the Spanish manufacturer).
The second reason why CAF’s offer has been rejected was that the company submitted the bid with its new class trains, Oaris. These vehicles were inaugurated in 2010, homologated in 2013, but received the first order in 2015 and thus have not been put into service yet.
One of the requirements expressed by TCDD was that the trains should have been previously operated in other country. The trains were ordered in 2015 by Flytoget, a railway passenger transport operator in Norway, but will enter service in 2018.
We recall that the offer submitted by Siemens included the Velaro TRs trains and seven trains of this class are already in operation on Turkey’s high-speed network.
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