Duisburg’s new trams in service at last
Posted on 13th April 2023 at 15:54
In November 2017 DVG, operator of public transport in the German city of Duisburg, ordered 47 new GT8NF3 trams from Bombardier Transportation under a contract worth EUR 132M (and including spare parts and maintenance for 24 years).
The 34m long and 2.3m wide double-ended three-section 70% low-floor air-conditioned trams were designed to replace the system’s entire fleet of 43 GT10NC cars dating from 1986-1993 by mid-2023.
A pre-series vehicle (2001) from the Bautzen factory was delivered in September 2020 with the hope that it would be carrying passengers by summer 2021.However by the end of 2022 just six of the new trams had arrived and none had been declared fit to carry passengers, largely due to software problems.
Although the new trams were essentially the same design as cars already in service at Rurrbahn (Essen and Mülheim), the Duisburg example is standard-gauge compared to metre-gauge elsewhere in the Ruhr. It also has five doors each side compared with three on the Ruhrbahn. Capacity is 200 passengers (64 seated).
In January 2021 Alstom Transport purchased Bombardier Transportation, taking over responsibility for the Duisburg order. The company has worked with DVG to overcome the problems with the new tram, including adding two ‘free’ trams to the order as recompense for the delay.
Duisberg's new tram on test in the city streets DVG
Finally, after the receipt of clearance from the regulatory authority in Düsseldorf, the first five cars were put into service on line 903 on 13 April 2023. The existing fleet of Duisburg trams must all be replaced in 2024 due to the upgrading of the train control system for subway operation, and Alstom hopes to have the complete order delivered to Duisburg by the end of 2024.
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