China: UK firm Smith Bros & Webb has won orders totalling £500000 to supply metro car washing plants to the Shenzhen and Guangzhou metros.
Daewoo Construction Co Ltd expects to begin civil engineering work this month on the 22 km, 9·5bn yuan Shenyang metro network.
This month is expected to see the start of trial running on the Xinzhuang - Minhang extension of Shanghai Metro Line 1.
Czech Republic: Skoda Dopravni Technika was the only company to submit a bid to supply 20 trams to the city of Praha, with an option for 40 more.
Finland: Talgo Oy’s Otanmäki works is to refurbish 39 Helsinki metro trains by 2008. The €8m agreement with HKL marks Talgo Oy’s entrance in the refurbishment market, as until now it has concentrated on new-build work.
Poland: The contract awarded to Turkish civil engineering group Güris Insaat ve Mühendislik AS for work on 3·7 km of the north-south light rail route in Krakow was worth €31m, not as stated in RG8.03 p478.
Romania: Bern has donated six redundant trams to the city of Iasi. Three more will be sent in Spring.
Russia: DPO Inekon, a joint venture of Inekon Group Praha and Ostrava Transport Authority, has supplied the first two of 10 T3M trams ordered by the city of Izhevsk in a KC60m contract which was signed in April 2002.
Spain: Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat Valenciana has ordered 10 Siemens Combino trams and spares in a package worth €27m, for use in Alacant and Valencia. To be delivered from January, the five-section metre-gauge bidirectional vehicles will be 31·5m long and 2·4m wide, and will seat 53.
Euskotren has signed a contract with Iberdrola that will see electricity for Bilbao’s light rail network generated only by means of renewable resources such as wind, water and solar power. This is believed to be the first contract of its kind in the European Union. A 1·5 km, four-stop extension of EuskoTran Line A to San Mamés was inaugurated on July 24.
FGV has begun work on a new station at Bailén which will provide direct access to the new central station in Valencia for suburban and high speed services on the national network (RG 5.03 p246).
Turkey: Konya Metropolitan Municipality has awarded Eser Musavirlik a contract to prepare a feasibility report for extension of the city’s light rail network.
United Kingdom: Pick Everard is designing lighting and power systems for a £28m upgrade of the Glasgow Subway, to be completed by First Engineering in early 2005.
London Underground has appointed Mott MacDonald to review options for enhancing ventilation and cooling of stations and tunnels, including the production of a comprehensive asset database giving details of all spaces where equipment could be located.
USA: New York MTA has established Capital Construction Company as a single clearing house to handle all its future expansion projects, including the East Side Access, Second Avenue Subway and Flushing line extension.
Utah Transit Authority is sub-lease 29 UTDC LRVs from Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority at a cost of approximately $18·6m. At the end of the lease-back agreement in 2017 UTA will buy the vehicles from VTA for $1000 each. VTA hopes to sell its 21 remaining UTDC high-floor cars to Sacramento.
