This week’s round-up of news from the urban transport sector.
Turkey’s Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure has signed a contract with Bozankaya for the supply of five trams to run in Izmit, augmenting the 10 ordered in April 2023. Mayor Tahir Büyükakın attended a ceremony to mark the trams entering service in early December.
Alstom’s Thunder Bay plant has delivered the last of 60 Flexity trams ordered by Toronto Transit Commission in 2021 for its legacy streetcar lines. The 100% low floor five-section unidirectional vehicles with all-wheel drive which entered services from November 2023 are customised to local requirements including the city’s 1 495 mm gauge.
On December 16 Moskva opened its second catenary-free tram line, reinstating Route 5 after a 30-year absence to connect Belorussky railway station with Rizhskaya metro station via Trifonovskaya Ul. New tracks have been laid, existing track renewed, and a turning loop installed near Rizhskaya metro station. The PK TS Lvyonok trams travel 4 km from Ul Obraztsova to Rizhskaya metro station and back on battery power without needing overhead wires.
The Rail Reliability Taskforce that was formed in September 2025 and includes Singapore’s Land Transport Authority and operators SMRT Group and SBST has concluded its initial investigation into service disruption in the metro network. It announced on December 30 that it had found the underlying causes of incidents occurring between July and September were unrelated, but that there were areas for improvement. The Taskforce has recommended introducing additional backup or bypass systems and procedures to allow train operations to continue or resume more quickly after a minor fault, once the safety of passengers has been ensured. It also recommended prioritising the renewal of trains, signalling and power supplies, and to shorten the time taken to renew these assets.
Transport for London and technology partner Boldyn Networks have announced that 62 out of the 121 London Underground stations that are located below ground now have mobile coverage in their ticket halls, corridors and platforms. Work is underway to extend coverage in the running tunnels, with the first sections of the Circle and District lines now live and the whole network to have mobile coverage by the end of 2026. Design and initial testing work is now underway on the Windrush suburban line and Docklands Light Railway, with coverage planned for later this year.
Fort Worth’s Trinity Metro has recruited Mike Brennan as Vice-President of Economic Development, working with businesses, developers, property owners, and other stakeholders to implement the agency’s economic development goals and objectives. ‘We have such great potential around Trinity Metro’s stations’, he said. ‘So many people wish to live or work in close proximity to convenient transit. Meeting that demand always requires collaboration among private and public sector partners, and I look forward to that work.’
