New Astra Vagoane Imperio trams for Bucharest

The Bucharest City Council and the cities’ public transport operator Societatea de Transport Bucuresti (STB) have ordered 100 new low-floor trams with the Romanian railway and tramway manufacturer Astra Vagoane. The order has a volume of 200 million Euro and includes the delivery of the 100% low-floor trams from August 2022 on. The planned delivery rate will be four trams per month.

The articulated 4-car trams are based on Astra’s known Imperio articulated concept, using Siemens electrical and propulsion equipment. The mechanical architecture is similar to Siemens’ Avenio design with 100% low-floor design and bogies located centrally below each car.

Astra Vagoane is a rolling stock manufacturing company whose predecessors have been founded in 1891 when Romania still belonged to the Austro-Hungarian empire. Today the company employs 260 in two factories in Arad, western Romania. Astra Vagoane is a subsidiary of Astra Rail group, which in 2016 merged its operations with US-headquartered rail industry equipment and services supplier Greenbrier.

So far, Astra Vagoane has contracts for Imperio low-floor trams for the Romanian tram systems of Cluj-Napoca (24 trams), Galaţi (18 trams), Oradea and Arad (10 vehicles each). With the latest order for Bucharest, orders have now risen to 162 trams. The first Imperio tram for Oradea has been delivered and tested on the cities’ tram network recently:

Bucharest’s trams

The Bucharest tram network is one of 11 systems in the country and at the same time Romania’s largest tram system with ca. 332 km of routes and 144 km of tracks. Besides the 23 tram lines, STB also operates two converter light rail, so-called metrou uşor, lines. The current rolling stock consists in roughly 500 trams of different types which are mainly Bucur partially low-floor trams, Bucur V2A, V2S V3A high-floor trams, of which some with a low-floor centre-section as well as Tatra T4 trams. STB also operates the local trolleybus network with 15 lines, measuring 164.1 km of routes or 73.2 km and the local buses. Furthermore, the metro operator Metrorex operates four metro lines in the city.

Further information on Bucharest’s electric public transport modes can be found here:

http://www.urbanrail.net/eu/ro/buc/bucuresti-tram.htm