GERMANY: München’s municipally-owned utility company Stadtwerke München has exercised options worth more than €200m for Siemens Mobility to supply a further 73 four-section Avenio trams, similar to those already in service. Deliveries are scheduled to begin in 2021.

Ingo Wortmann, Chairman of the management board of SWM’s transport operator MVG, said the trams would ‘enable us to make further improvements to the existing network and operate new routes like the planned tram tangents and a tram line in the northern part of the city’.

The four-section trams will have a ‘spacious and bright’ interior with as capacity of around 218 passengers, infotainment monitors, two large multi-purpose areas for pushchairs and wheelchairs and eight double doors for rapid boarding and alighting.

They will have a welded steel frame, with the bodyshell having cathodic dip painting to protect against corrosion.

‘In 2012, München was the first customer to order the new Avenio’, said Siemens Mobility CEO Sabrina Soussan when the latest contract was announced on July 4. ‘In the meantime, Stadtwerke München has continually expanded its Avenio fleet. The long-standing trust of our customer rests on the special passenger comfort and the high reliability and availability of the trams already in service.’