Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona and Wiener Linien, the Viennese mobility operator, have signed an agreement by which both companies will collaborate in the Austrian capital's expansion project which includes automating Line 2 and constructing the new Line 5 that will be fully automated and driverless.
The agreement, valid for three years and extendible, was signed on Friday by the president of TMB, Mercedes Vidal, and the managing director of Wiener Linien, Günter Steinbauer, as the closing event of the Metro Assembly at the International Union of Public Transport, that has taken place last week in Vienna.
The Viennese operator is working on a plan to improve its metro network which currently comprises five lines covering a total of 80 kilometres and 105 stations. The main actions planned are the renovation of Line 2 and the construction of the new Line 5, both fully automated and driverless. Wiener Linien valued Barcelona's experience, which has had automatic metro lines since 2009 with 25 percent of the current network operating without drivers, and sought TMB's assistance in developing the extension and modernization plans for their own network.
In fact, Barcelona and Vienna share similarities in terms of the size of the cities and their public transport networks as well as their public authorities' commitment to sustainable mobility. From the perspective of the operators, the agreement reached provides opportunities for mutual learning that will surely benefit both parties.
Additionally, this reconfirms the role of TMB as an international reference point for innovation and technologies applied to the design and operation of mass public transport, especially in terms of metro networks as the spinal columns of collective mobility systems in metropolitan areas.
Bear in mind that the Automated Metros Observatory, a permanent body of the UITP, is being coordinated from Barcelona, responsible for disseminating and sharing up-to-date and relevant knowledge about lines that operate automated trains. Their core activities are monitoring, study and dissemination, functions that have turned the Observatory into a forum for debate and analysis of the future global trends for the metro.
