Siemens wins £1.5b deal to build new London Tube trains

London

A DIVISION of Germany's Siemens has been awarded a contract worth about £1.5 billion (S$2.7 billion) to design and build 94 new trains for the Piccadilly Line on London's metropolitan train network, known as the Tube.

Transport for London (TfL), the public body in charge of the Tube, said the award of the contract would allow Siemens Mobility Ltd to push ahead with its plan to build a new factory in Goole, east Yorkshire, in northern England.

"The Siemens Mobility Limited factory would employ up to 700 people in skilled engineering and manufacturing roles, plus up to an additional 250 people during the construction phase of the factory," TfL said in a statement. "As a result, around 1,700 indirect jobs would be created throughout the UK supply chain," it said.

Siemens said in March that it had leased 27 hectares of land in Goole with a view to building a £200 million train factory. The plans were subject to the company's success in securing major future orders, it said at the time. Siemens Mobility Ltd is Siemens's British subsidiary for its trains and transport technology business.

TfL said it had also received bids from a joint venture of Canada's Bombardier and Japan's Hitachi, and from France's Alstom when the bidding process began in 2016. Subsequently, Siemens and Alstom announced that their rail businesses were due to be merged. While the order is for an initial 94 trains for the Piccadilly Line, TfL said the contract was being awarded on the expectation that the manufacturer would also build trains of the same design for three other so-called Deep Tube lines.

The Piccadilly Line carries more than 700,000 passengers per day. REUTERS