Siemens will Produce Driverless Metro Trains for Malaysia

Siemens has won a €260m contract from Malaysia’s Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) to supply 58 driverless metro trains with complete equipment for two new depots.

Siemens’ Inspiro trains will be operated on Kuala Lumpur’s new 51km Sungai Buloh-Kajang (SBK) line, which will connect the north-west town of Sungai Buloh and Kajang in the south-east with Kuala Lumpur.
Engineering and train components, including drive system and bogies, will be built at Siemens’ German and Austrian facilities.
Scheduled to be opened in 2017, the SBK line will have 31 stations, serving around 1.2 million people along the route and reducing congestion on roads in the Klang Valley.
MRT said that about 100km of new metro tracks are scheduled to be completed by 2020, which will connect central Kuala Lumpur with its nearby districts.
Malaysian authorities are considering the alignment of two other lines that are expected to be announced by the middle of 2013.
Siemens CEO of urban transport Sandra Gott-Karlbauer said that the vehicles for Kuala Lumpur are based on the new Inspiro metro platform.
“We want to produce a total of 58 four-car trains, designed for fully driverless operation, in conjunction with a local partner company in Malaysia,” Gott-Karlbauer said.