Main line rail industry news – Page 1255
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News
Dubai design deal
SYSTRA has been awarded a contract to undertake engineering design and draw up tender documents for the planned 50 km two-line metro in Dubai (RG 2.02 p66). The east-west Green line will link the airport with the port, and the north-south Red line will run parallel to the coast. The ...
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No date set to open Madrid - Lleida
FACED WITH MOUNTING delays, the Spanish Ministry of Development has been forced to abandon its timetable for opening the Madrid - Lleida high speed line (RG 3.03 p117), which will not now be carrying fare-paying passengers until it is deemed to be completely ready. Commissioning is being piloted by a ...
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Sevilla contract awarded
A CONSORTIUM led by Dragados and Sacyr has been awarded a contract to build Sevilla’s first metro line, which will be the first in Spain to be operated by the private sector under a 30-year contract. The winning bid was based on a cost of €382m for civil works and ...
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Spanish reform moves ahead
FOLLOWING SEVERAL months of consultation with the major trade unions, at its meeting on March 14 the Spanish cabinet agreed to submit the government’s railways bill to the lower house of parliament. This will write European Union directives 2001/12/CE, 2001/13/CE and 2001/14/CE into Spanish law, separating infrastructure management from operations ...
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Dual gauge link
UNDER A programme to upgrade the Zaragoza - Huesca route for high speed services, the 20·7 km section between Tardienta and Huesca has been relaid to dual 1435mm and 1668mm gauge at a cost of €19m. Work has been undertaken during overnight possessions by Tecsa, using components developed by high ...
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High speed to El Ferrol
SPANISH high speed construction authority GIF has invited bids for four contracts to undertake preliminary studies for a new 450 km route along the northern coast, between El Ferrol and Bilbao via Oviedo and Santander. Three contracts cover the route in Galicia (budgeted at €1·8m), Asturias (k3m), and Cantabria and ...
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Polish cuts bite deep
ON March 10 Polish State Railways withdrew 1059 daily passenger trains, around one-third of the total operated, after what Regional Operations Director Grzegorz Uklejewski called a ’most difficult decision’. Falling subsidies and mounting debts made cost savings ’essential’, he insisted. Timetable planning for this year had assumed a subsidy of ...
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Hard times in Buenos Aires
THE FAILINGS of the once-vaunted privatisation of suburban operations in Buenos Aires were thrown into sharp relief when senior executives from concessionaires Ferrovías, Metropolitano, Trenes de Buenos Aires and Metrovías where summoned to a meeting on February 27 with Minister of Production Aníbal Fern
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More trouble at Alstom
SO FAREWELL, Michel Moreau. The President of Alstom Transport left the company last month, and will be replaced by Philippe Mellier, who will join Alstom from the Volvo Group on May 1. Meanwhile, Deputy President of the Transport sector Gérard Blanc has been named Acting President. Confirming rumours that all ...
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Audit launches project debate
ON MARCH 4 the French Ministry of Transport published an ’audit’ of major infrastructure projects commissioned last August from the Conseil Général des Ponts et Chaussées (RG 3.03 p136). Transport Minister Gilles de Robien had called for the report because he had inherited projects ’begun, studied or announced by ...
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Straight Ahead ’risks re-regulation’
CANADIAN Minister of Transport David Collenette published Straight Ahead - a Vision for Transportation in Canada at the end of February. Intended as a strategic document, Straight Ahead sets out principles and guidelines designed to ’reflect the currents of change that will shape Canada’s economy and society’ for the next ...
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Rough ride ahead
THE STAGE is set for serious discord between Austrian Federal Railways and the newly-elected government, a coalition of conservative and far-right forces. Transport Minister Hubert Gorbach is not expected to favour the status quo, and there are early indications of trouble. ÖBB’s new Director of Infrastructure Dr Alfred Zimmerman said ...
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Fighting 'the new battle of rail'
MARCH 15 came and went like any other day on Europe's rail network, but the date will be written into railway history. For it marked another stage in the European Commission's policy to lift rail freight's market share by opening up the 50000 route-km Trans European Rail Freight Network to ...
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Riders missing
LATER this year New Jersey Transit will open its 54·7 km South Jersey diesel light rail line. Sadly, the project looks set to be a serious drain on NJT’s finances, with farebox revenue expected to cover just 11% of estimated annual operating costs of $21·5m. Despite a planned bargain one-way ...
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Achieving public value through co-operation
Alexander van Altena, Director for Rail in the Ministry of Transport & Public Works, spoke to Andrew Grantham about the new Railways Act, and the Dutch government’s plans for the future of the national rail network
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Indian coaches rolled out
ON FEBRUARY 17 Indian Railways’ Rail Coach Factory at Kapurthala rolled out the first four locally-built inter-city coaches being built to an Alstom-LHB design under a technology transfer agreement (RG 8.99 p515). Expected to enter revenue service shortly, the first vehicles are two air-conditioned 78-seat second class cars and two ...
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Italian profits
Sir - Trenitalia Chief Executive Roberto Renon is reported as saying that his company’s profit ’was the first profit in the whole history of FS’ (RG 11.02 p689).This is not so. Up to 1939 Italian Railways was profitable. Editions of The Railway Year Book in the late 1930s show that ...
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AMEC votes to buy Spie
AMEC plc shareholders voted at an Extraordinary General Meeting in favour of exercising an option to acquire the outstanding 54% interest in Spie. The €270m transaction will be funded using existing committed bank facilities, and is expected to be completed on March 5. AMEC’s preliminary results for the year to ...