Adif, the Spanish railway infrastructure manager, has awarded a contract globally worth around €280 million to the Alstom-led consortium to build and maintain for a period of 20 years the signalling and telecommunications systems for the high speed line Albacete-Alicante. This is the first contract to supply HS equipment awarded by Adif in PPP (Public Private Partnership) scheme.
Alstom, whose share of the contract is worth around €110 million, will lead the consortium made up of Grupo Comsa-Emte, Isolux Concesiones and CAF. Alstom will undertake the global coordination of the project, the system architecture and the supply, installation and maintenance of the signalling system and ERTMS.
The key technology in this contract is the ERTMS signalling equipment for the high speed line. For the first time in Spain, ERTMS Level 2 will be installed without the back up of Level 1 equipment. ERTMS L2 is based on a GSM communication system dedicated for railways (GSM-R). The overall contract includes the project design, installation and maintenance of the signalling system, the fixed communication system, centralised traffic control (CTC), security equipment, the Automatic Train Protection system, mobile GSM-R communications equipment and infrastructure for mobile phone operators.
Alstom is the world leader in ERTMS Level 2 technology, since it has equipped 6 out of the 10 existing lines with this technology. In particular, Alstom was the first to equip a very high speed line (the Rome – Naples line in Italy), a cross-border high speed line (from Liege in Belgium to the German border), a high traffic density line (the Mattstetten-Rothrist line in Switzerland) and a freight-only line (Havenspoorlijn line in the Netherlands).
Henri Poupart-Lafarge, President of Alstom Transport, said: "Alstom offers the best technology in the market, supported by the strongest traffic management capacity and the best reliability and availability of its equipment, which improves operational performance and reduces maintenance costs."