TENDERS will be called shortly for 60 double-deck S-Bahn trains and a fleet of double-deck coaches to run in the existing fleet of 115 double-deck push-pull S-Bahn sets serving Zürich.

Demand for travel on the S-Bahn is expected to rise by 80% by 2025, and Swiss Federal Railways announced on April 12 that it had agreed an investment strategy with Zürcher Verkehrsverbund that will see more than SFr100m a year spent on rolling stock over the next five years.

Delivery of the 60 new trains and the replacement intermediate coaches for the push-pull sets will not start before 2010. The air-conditioned coaches will have low entrance doors for easy access by disabled passengers, and air-conditioning will be retrofitted to the other cars in the push-pull fleet. The intermediate cars taken out of the push-pull sets will be reformed into loco-hauled trains to replace single-deck stock currently used only during peak hours.

The larger fleet will provide SBB with enough stock to introduce new services when the 9?6 km cross-city line linking Altstetten with Hauptbahnhof and Oerlikon is opened in 2015 (RG 5.06 p256).