Alstom’s delays in delivering new metro trains continue to cause problems. At the end of 2025, those on line 2 will no longer be able to run. A new order for trains is therefore planned by the MEL.
Part of the metro of the European Metropolis of Lille (MEL) will soon be obsolete. The end of operation of the trains of line 2 (Saint-Philibert – Ch Dron) is planned between the end of 2025 and the end of 2030. A year and a half from the deadline, the MEL ad buy “the equivalent of 71 to 87 26 meter trainsets” to replace them. The two industrialists Alstom and Siemens will be responsible for delivering them.
Half of the network’s 143 trains will thus be changed, even though the metropolis has been waiting, for eight years now, for a delivery of new generation 52 meter metro trains.
In 2012, the MEL signed a major contract with the manufacturer Alstom, to modernize its metropolitan transport network. The project cost 266 million euros. And the program was optimistic: 27 of the 53 trains on line 1, which measure 26 meters, had to be replaced by 52 meter trains.
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Ambition: doubling the number of metro trains by 2016.The initial objective of this operation was to increase the carrying capacity of line 1 by 50% and that of line 2 by 30% by 2016.”, specifies the MEL in a press release. Problem: the commissioning of these new 52 meter trains, planned for 2016, has been postponed again and again… And they are still not active.
The delay accumulated on the 52-meter project (…) requires the acquisition of new metro trains without delay.
the European Metropolis of Lillein a press release
They should finally start operating in 2026.Also, the delay accumulated on the 52 meter project (…) requires the acquisition of new metro trains without delay“, explains the MEL in its press release. Otherwise, the metropolis risks “to see the offer not increased as planned but reduced due to a lack of available trains from 2026 and this despite the expected arrival of the new 52m trains on line 1”.
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The MEL specifies that the process of acquiring new trains has already begun.The preliminary projects have been produced and the industrial consultation files are being finalized”, she writes. Negotiations are therefore planned for the fall of 2024. They should make it possible to propose replacement acquisitions on each of the two lines during the Metropolitan Council in December 2024, “thus avoiding any impact on the level of supply”.
