China's megacities alone are home to more than 260 million people. These gigantic conurbations have recently undergone rapid growth of almost two percent per year, and are suffering increasing traffic problems caused by the soaring rate of car use. Hence the correspondingly strong demand for solutions for the further development of urban rail transport. The Nanjing customer has now commissioned Siemens to equip metro Ninghe Line with the CBTC automatic train protection system Trainguard MT. The contract includes the CBTC trackside equipment for the 36 kilometer line as well as the ATC equipment of the 24 trains. In the long term more than ten metro lines will be built in Nanjing – of which five alone will or already been feature Siemens signaling technology.Siemens can look back on a long partnership in China with the Nanjing Metro Corporation. Siemens equipped metro line 1, which started running in 2005 and is now 47 kilometers long, as well as metro line 2 in 2010. Line 2 serves 26 stations and forms the east-west tangent of the city of Nanjing in eastern China. Following the extension of the city's metro with line 2, the rail network now covers 85 kilometers. Line 10, Nangjing's first cross-Yangtze river metro line was put into operation on July 1, 2014. Its first phase runs 23.6 kilometers with 14 stations. The latest Nanjing metro line fitted with signaling technology from Siemens is Nanjing Metro Line 3, which went on public operation on April 1, 2015.
Mitsui Rail Capital Europe (MRCE), a full-service locomotive leasing company, has ordered 136 Vectron type locomotives from Siemens in total. MRCE therefore owns one of the biggest Vectron fleets. In March 2018 Siemens and MRCE have agreed to found a joint venture for the maintenance of locomotives. Together, the companies will not only maintain the MRCE fleet, but also reliably service and guarantee the maximum availability of third-party fleets with their innovative maintenance technologies. Both partners are jointly investing in the joint venture, primarily to build a new workshop for locomotives. The groundbreaking ceremony is planned for the current calendar year. The new workshop is scheduled to open in the summer of 2019.
Copenhagen's S-tog (commuter rail system) is the backbone of the capital's public mass transit network. It carries around 350,000 passengers a day - and that number is growing all the time. This reflects the growth in the metropolitan area around the Danish capital where more than one fifth of the entire population of Denmark now lives. So, in the space of six years, Siemens will equip Copenhagen's entire commuter rail network with the Trainguard MT train control system which uses Communications-Based Train Control (CBTC) to automate operation. This has made it possible to reduce train headways from 120 seconds to 70 seconds within the inner-city area.The first phase; the newly opened 25 kilometer section of Line A runs from the suburb of Hillerod in the north to Jaegersborg east of the capital and will be used by more than 70.000 commuters a day. Once the complete network is open, up to 84 trains an hour will travel on the core network - equivalent to more than 1 million passengers per year. The remaining phases will enter passenger service in the coming years.
San Francisco is considered an especially environmentally friendly city. The urban environment is characterized by an extensive public transport system. In September 2014, San Francisco's Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) has awarded Siemens a contract to deliver an initial 175 light rail cars at a value of USD648 million. The order included an option for additional 85 cars. One year later, SFMTA exercised its option for another 40 light rail vehicles for the public mass transit network. This is one of the biggest orders for light rail cars ever placed in the USA. The trains are being built in the Siemens plant in Sacramento. Today, every third tram or light rail vehicle in the USA is made by Siemens.
In December 2010, Siemens received an order from Eurostar International Ltd. for ten interoperable 16-car high-speed trains, and the company ordered an additional seven in January 2015. The trains are based on the Velaro, the world's most diverse high-speed platform. Service with the first Eurostar Velaro was inaugurated in November 2015 between London and Paris through the Channel Tunnel. In May 2017, service also began on the route between London and Brussels. And the Velaro has been running between London and Amsterdam via Brussels since April 2018.The train, designated as the "e320" by Eurostar, provides around 20 more passenger capacity than the previous Eurostar trains. With an overall length of 400 meters, the e320 is the longest member of the Velaro family and has seating for 900 passengers.All 17 trains are currently in operation and cover a total of around 37,000 kilometers a month in service. Passengers are offered free WLAN access, USB ports and services such as TV streaming and films via an onboard entertainment system. In view of these special amenities, the e320 was named "Train of the Year 2017" by the National Rail Awards in the United Kingdom.
Now things are getting down to business: following the initial test phase in the fall of 2016, the Siemens SiBike app is going live in Marburg. In the weeks between now and mid-November, dozens of cyclists will be subjecting this system – which gives priority to bicycles in city traffic – to a stress test that is taking place under realistic conditions. Beginning on October 5, 2017, SiBike is launching on a 700-meter stretch of the Erlenring road in Marburg, Germany. Dozens of volunteer "test pilots" will be helping optimize the "green wave" app. And beginning at the end of November, all Marburg residents will be able to download the SiBike app to their smartphones.By the way: Marburg is a trendsetter. Since the project's successful start last year, numerous cities in Europe and the U.S. have already expressed interest in this technology.
Siemens has been awarded a contract to provide 152 new S70 light rail vehicles (LRVs) for Sound Transit, the regional transit system serving the Seattle and Central Puget Sound area in the US state of Washington. The S70s light rail vehicles will be built at the Siemens rail manufacturing hub in Sacramento, California. The fleet is expected to begin testing in 2019.
The Finnish Railways, VR Group, ordered 80 electric Vectron locomotives from Siemens. The new locomotives are designed to operate reliably even under the extreme climatic conditions in Scandinavia during their long service life. Siemens was able to provide clear evidence of their capability during comprehensive test and authorization trips in Sweden and Norway. For Siemens this marks the largest single contract so far for its latest generation of Vectron locomotives and the first for this type in the broad gauge version.
Over 100 years ago, on August 5, 1914, the first electric traffic light was installed on a city street in Cleveland, Ohio, marking a milestone in traffic management. Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz (photo), at that time the busiest intersection in Europe, installed the famous five-sided traffic light tower made by Siemens in 1924. Today the red-yellow-green signals are an integral part of city landscapes worldwide. On the outside, traffic lights haven’t changed much over the last decades. But inside a traffic light, groundbreaking changes have taken place. Traffic lights have become more intelligent over the years: modern traffic management takes into account the current traffic situation and optimizes traffic flow, for example, by allowing "green waves" or by prioritizing emergency vehicles, buses, and trams.