Contracts and deals in the urban electric transport markets.
USA — Stadler will supply up to 40 Citylink trams to Austin, under a contract with municipal company ATP, which is building a 16 km light rail line through the city. The base order runs to 19 three-section, low-floor units carrying 240 passengers each. Production will be based at Stadler’s Salt Lake City plant.
Germany — Leipzig transport authority LVB has launched a procurement for up to 90 trams. The base order covers 30 XXL-type trams, 45 m long with room for 280 passengers, due for delivery in 2028-2029. Options remain open for a further 30 XXL units and 30 shorter, 30 m L-type trams seating 180. Leipzig ordered 25 trams from local builder HeiterBlick back in 2021, but that delivery has already slipped three years after the manufacturer went bankrupt. The city placed a follow-on order for another 30 cars in late 2025, once Poland’s Pesa had bought up HeiterBlick’s assets.
Baltiets metro train on the Narvskaya-Avtovo section. Source: frunzenecc/TransPhoto
Russia — St Petersburg needs 712 metro cars by 2035. Deputy governor Kirill Polyakov gave the figure after meeting TMH general director Kirill Lipa. He said around 380 Baltiets cars have been delivered to the city so far under a 2022 contract with the TMH plant in St Petersburg, with the remaining 570 due by the end of 2031.
Brazil — Brasília metro operator Metrô-DF has launched a tender for 15 four-car metro trains, valued at BRL 1 bln, or around $195 mln. Funding for the rolling stock comes from national development bank BNDES. China’s CRRC and France’s Alstom remain the dominant players in Brazil’s metro train market.
Render of the Twist 3.0 tram for Gdańsk. Source: Pesa
Poland — Pesa beat Škoda Group to a contract for 20 five-section, 47 m trams for Gdańsk. The two bids came in almost identical, at just over PLN 524 mln (€122 mln), but Pesa’s proposal scored higher on several technical points. Each tram in the new Twist 3.0 platform will carry up to 321 passengers, 100 of them seated, and delivery is due within three years of signing. The purchase will be financed through preferential EU loans. Once in service, these will be the longest trams in Poland.
Romania — Astra Vagoane will supply 20 two-section trams to Ploiești after all. The court of appeal has ruled in the Romanian manufacturer’s favour for good. It won the tender back in spring, but runner-up Bozankaya, a Turkish firm, tried to challenge the competition’s terms. The deal is worth €50 mln, with €36 mln coming from a European Investment Bank loan and €9 mln from EU funding.
BKM T701 tram in Nizhnekamsk. Source: AST/TransPhoto
Russia — BKM Holding will modernise 22 trams for Nizhnekamsk and Naberezhnye Chelny. Two tenders worth RUB 740 mln ($9.1 mln) combined, including VAT, went to BKM-Sibir, a joint venture between the Belarusian manufacturer and Novosibirsk Oblast, which outscored bids from the Ust-Katav Car-Building Plant and bus dealer Avtobusny Tsentr – Stolitsa. The 71-605 (KTM-5) trams will get a new, partially low-floor carbody and a modern traction drive with asynchronous motors, giving them an off-wire range of up to 500 m. Nizhnekamsk will pay RUB 33.4 mln ($0.33 mln) per car for its 11 units; Naberezhnye Chelny, RUB 33.9 mln ($0.34 mln). A BKM T701 tram modernised with BKM Holding’s involvement has already been running in Nizhnekamsk for more than two months.
