CHILE: National railway EFE has awarded a €18·6m supervision contract covering the 35·9 km Melipilla – Malloco section of the planned Santiago – Melipilla suburban railway. The winning ADI Consortium is made up of Ayesa Engineering (40%), DRS (40%) and ILF (20%).
The contract announced in mid-May covers project management and document control, technical office support, on-site inspection, quality and performance monitoring, and overall project coordination. Building information modelling methodology is to be used for effective oversight and control throughout the work.
The 61 route-km Santiago – Melipilla line was closed to passengers in 1987. Reconstruction aims to enable the launch of dedicated suburban services as part of the national ‘Chile on Rails’ investment programme.
Work between Malloco and Melipilla includes the construction of a second track. Four stations are to be built, the tracks replaced and a new signalling system implemented. The line is also to be electrified, level crossings replaced and maintenance workshops built.
Suburban services are planned to terminate at the Central-Alameda station complex in Santiago, where an underground terminus is envisaged, providing interchange with the city’s metro network.
‘With this contract, we continue to support the development of Chile’s rail and metro networks — building on our previous work inspecting the extension of metro Line 3, and our current role overseeing civil works for sections 2, 3, and 4 of metro Line 7 in Santiago,’ commented Mariluz Ramírez, Director of the LATAM Transport Division at Ayesa said.
Separately, EFE announced on May 16 that it had received bids for a US$175m tender for the deployment and maintenance of ETCS Level 2 signalling on the Santiago –Melipilla and Santiago – Batuco lines from Alstom, Hitachi/Probe (Centelec), Siemens and CAF Signalling/Cobra. The contract is expected to be awarded by August.
- Dig deeper: Read our feature article about the Chilean government’s ambitious passenger rail revival programme in the August 2023 issue of Railway Gazette International.
