The Spanish CAF Group – Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles, S.A. – has won major orders from the Madrid Metro for the procurement of new metro trains.
The manufacturer will initially supply 40 six-car trains for the large-profile network with a vehicle width of 2.80 metres to replace older trains and extend the service on lines 6, 8 and 11. The contracts for this have now been signed. An option for additional train orders is included. All trains will be able to be converted for future semi-automatic or fully automatic, driverless operation in accordance with the GoA2 or GoA4 (UTO) standard. They will replace the older 5000 series trains, which are 32-40 years old and currently still in use on some lines. The tender conditions were considered especially demanding in terms of lifecycle costs, energy consumption and optional automatization.
According to the preliminary results of the tender, 40 CAF trains are also to be supplied for the small profile line 1 with a vehicle width of 2.40 metres to replace the older 2000 series. They are also six-car units, and here too four of the six carriages are powered, while the other two run as trailers within the train.
Delivery of both series is scheduled to begin in the second half of 2026, provided the supply chains allow this.
The total contract value is around EUR 1.1 billion, of which around EUR 470 million is being provided as a long-term subsidised loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB) in Luxembourg.
Cercanías
The rolling stock of the Cercanías suburban railway system in the Madrid metropolitan area is also due for modernisation. For around two years now, there have been repeated and increasing disruptions to operations, delays and train cancellations, as both the rolling stock and the infrastructure, particularly in the area of safety technology, are significantly under-invested. The chronic unreliability of the system, which transports up to 600 million passengers a year, has been the subject of heated political debate for some time now. This is not least about financing the necessary investments in the infrastructure.
However, the financing of new rolling stock could have been secured already some time ago and has resulted in orders worth approximately EUR 2.5 billion. From 2025, Alstom will deliver 137 four-car trains, each around 100 metres long, to the state-owned RENFE for operation in the Madrid area, with a further 49 going to the Rodalies suburban railway system in Barcelona. Stadler, on the other hand, is building 35 eight-car trains around 200 metres long for Cercanías Madrid – plus a further 20 units of the same design for Rodalies Barcelona. As a special feature, the trains in vehicle segments 2, 3, 6 and 7 are each double-decker. The first trains of both series are already in test operation in the factories.
