Spain's Talgo to supply electric trains to Latvia for €225.3m

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Latvia’s Pasažieru Vilciens (Passenger Rail) rail passenger carrier will purchase new electric trains from Spanish company Talgo, the rail company’s CEO Rodžers Jānis Grigulis told the press November 21.

Meanwhile representatives of the Czech Republic's Škoda Vagonka told the press that they are likely to contest the procurement, saying that their initial offer had beaten the closest contestant by €10m but was "consciously made more expensive" by ensuing revisions on the part of the rail company. 

The value of the train supply contract is €225.303 million.

Grigulis said that the bid submitted by the Spanish company was economically the most feasible for the train’s projected service life of 35 years. Asked about the prices offered by other bidders, Grigulis said that the next best offer had been €20 million costlier.

The contract price includes delivery of the trains and the equipment necessary for their maintenance, spare parts for the first five years and training of the personnel.

Grigulis said that the bids submitted by the potential train suppliers were assessed by the projected operation costs planned for the 35 years of the trains’ service life. To select the best offer, the Latvian side took into consideration not only the schedule for the train’s manufacture and delivery but also the costs of daily maintenance, repairs, spare parts, energy consumption and other expenses per passenger seat.

Grigulis pointed out that Pasažieru Vilciens will be paying 22% less for a passenger seat than Estonia which purchased passenger trains from Stadler.

Grigulis said that the result of the passenger train tender was announced to the potential suppliers today at 11 a.m. and that they now have 10 weekdays to appeal the result. Considering the possibility of appeals, Grigulis was unable to tell when the contract might be signed.

After concluding the train purchase, Pasažieru Vilciens will be able to introduce regular-interval timetables on all routes, which means that during morning and evening rush hours departures will be scheduled for every 15 to 20 minutes. The new trains will be running on the Aizkraukle, Tukums, Skulte and Jelgava lines.

The new passenger trains will be delivered to Pasažieru Vilciens gradually, from 2020 to 2023.

Pasažieru Vilciens will purchase 32 electric trains with places for 450 passengers in each train.

As reported, the Latvian government decided on November 5 that Pasažieru Vilciens will be able to spend up €259 million worth of budget money on the purchase and maintenance of new electric trains, parts and equipment, as well as construction of railway depots.

According to the decision taken by Latvia’s outgoing Cabinet of Ministers, Pasažieru Vilciens will be able to invest €259 million in the purchase and maintenance of new passenger trains and equipment and construction of new railway depots from 2019 to 2024.

Pasažieru Vilciens in September 2015 started a new tender to purchase electric trains, and four bidders had advanced to the second stage of the tender – Spanish company Talgo, Polish subsidiary of Swiss company Stadler, Spanish company Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles S.A. (CAF), and Czech company Skoda Vagonka.

Pasažieru Vilciens was established in 2001 to separate domestic passenger services from other functions performed by the state-owned Latvijas Dzelzceļš (Latvian Railways). Although initially Pasažieru Vilciens was a 100-percent owned subsidiary of Latvian Railways, in October 2008 it was transformed into an independent state-owned company.

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