The first of the 12 high-capacity Citadis tramway for the Lyon urban area was presented recently in front of the Part-Dieu station in Lyon, by Hubert Peugeot, business development & sales vice president of Alstom Transport France to Bernard Rivalta, president of Sytral (Lyon Urban Area Transport Union).
Forty-two meters long, the new tramways will replace the 32-meter-long ones currently in service and will be able to receive up to 300 passengers, i.e. the capacity of five buses. The new tramways will enter into commercial service on November 2012 on the T3 Line which links Part-Dieu station to Meyzieu’s.
Alstom’s Citadis tramway offers optimal on-board quality and maximum passenger comfort, including a full low floor, air conditioning, video surveillance and an information screen, and broadcast system. Moreover, Citadis helps protect the environment. Made of 98 percent recyclable materials, Citadis uses 4 times less energy than a bus and 10 times less than a car.
To respond to Systral wishes for an aesthetic consistency of the tramway, Alstom has proposed a new design in respect to the original signature. For example, the new tramway’s interior which was designed by the company Avant-Première has been maintained. The harmony of colors and fabrics will be adapted around an innovative feature using LED-based strips to vary ceiling colors.
With the 12 new tramways, the Lyon urban area’s network will total 86 Citadis tramways making its network the 3rd largest in France. Citadis benefits from more than 10 years of feedback on the Lyon network, which will make it easier to incorporate new tramways into the existing system and optimise the line operating cost.
Citadis is helping to promote the economic dynamism of the French regions. The tramways are designed and assembled at the Alstom plant in La Rochelle. The other sites involved in the production are Villeurbanne’s — nearly 700 employees — in charge of on-board information systems, as well as Ornans for motors, Le Creusot for bogies and Tarbes for electric and electronic traction equipment. Alstom Transport projects have generated 27,000 direct and indirect jobs with French suppliers; 80 percent of the company’s procurement is supplied by 4,600 firms located in France.
The introduction of the first high-capacity Citadis to the city of Lyon is the sixth entry in France since the beginning of the year after Montpellier, Brest, Rouen, Orleans and Dijon.
To date, more than 1,600 Citadis tramways have been sold to nearly 40 cities in the world. The tramways have carried more than 4.7 billion passengers and travelled more than 400 million kilometres.
