Berlin: Vigilance can report that Thales SAIC Transportation System limited company recently won a €33 million (270 million RMB) signalling contract for the Nanjing airport rail link to supply its state-of-art SelTrac CBTC signaling system along the 35.8 km line within a strict and demanding deadline of 22 months to be ready for the next Youth Olympic Games.
A source at Thales SAIC said the high-tech proven solution would allow the Airport Line to perform safely and reliably to ensure optimal performance for Nanjing’s growing passenger service and transport demand.
Vigilance also gathered that the line also had a potential future extension creating a 57.3 km long line.
Nanjing city will be the host of the 2014 Youth Olympic Games. The city has planned the opening of 4 new lines before these games, adding to the existing 2 lines. Due to these ambitions, there is a need for an advanced technology solution with proven maturity. Thales has already proved its success in the Chinese Urban Rail market, by signalling the Shanghai, Beijing, Wuhan, Guangzhou and Hong-Kong Metro with its SelTrac® CBTC system. This is a landmark contract for Thales SAIC as it marks the beginning of its collaboration with Nanjing Metro.
Thales’ CBTC system has been proven on 53 projects to date and operates on over 1,200 km of track in major urban centres around the world, carrying an estimated 3 billion passengers annually.
Having already benefited from six years of collaboration between the partners – Thales SEC and SAIC - and a key technological input from Thales, the company is ideally positioned to design, test and deploy the Thales SelTrac Communication Based Train Control solution (CBTC) in China.