Tashkent’s city council of people’s deputies on Oct. 8 approved a concept for buying 14 five-car trains, or 70 cars in total, for the Tashkent Metro, to be financed with funds from foreign governments and financial institutions. The project is due to be completed by the end of 2027.
The concept document stresses the need to phase in replacements for aging rolling stock, increase line capacity, improve safety and cut operating costs, including repairs and electricity.
Six-car trains were considered, but station lengths allow only five-car trains, and rebuilding stations would require very large sums, the document says.
The concept examines seven foreign manufacturers: CRRC, Kawasaki Rail Car, CAF, Alstom, Global Transport Solutions (GTR), Škoda Transportation and Hyundai Rotem. Only the Chinese and Russian companies submitted commercial offers, the document says. Germany’s Siemens said its solutions did not meet the metro’s requirements and made no offer.
The document names the offers from CRRC, GTR and Hyundai Rotem as the most optimal. It says that choosing the Russian manufacturer would avoid rebuilding existing depots and infrastructure, but would raise project costs because of loan interest.
The new cars would have 170-kilowatt asynchronous traction motors in place of the 110-kilowatt DC motors of the old 81-717/714 cars, according to the document.
Background: Only four-car trains currently run on the capital’s metro. In early 2023, four trains on the Uzbekistan Line were each given an extra car on an experimental basis, raising capacity from 1,000 to 1,300 passengers, but plans to lengthen more trains did not go further.
The metro’s four lines span 70 kilometers and have 50 stations. It carries more than 800,000 passengers a day on average, and a record of more than 1.2 million was set in late September.
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