Czech engineering company Skoda Transportation has submitted the cheapest offer on new subway train sets for Warsaw Metro. However, the price is only half of the points in the competition where five manufacturers want to succeed. Škoda Transportation is cooperating with Škoda Vagonka, according to the professional press. „If the price was the only decisive factor, the most lucrative and the biggest contract in the whole history of Warsaw metro would be won by the Czech Škoda,“ said polish journal Gazeta Wyborcza on its website today.
„The amount of 1.6 billion zlotys (CZK 9.7 billion) is the lowest price that the Czech Škoda submitted in the competition for delivery of 45 train sets for the subway in Warsaw. The winners of previous contracts, Alstom Konstal and the consortium of Siemens and Newag, were more expensive,“ the daily said.
He reminded that the Warsaw Underground has been preparing for the renewal of its park for two years, partly because of the extension of the second subway line. The second reason was the replacement of the oldest Soviet and Russian train sets from the 1980s and 1990s. Warsaw metro is going to purchase 222 wagons for 37 train sets. According to the conditions of the competition, the metro will decide whether to buy another eight train sets from the manufacturer within 2.5 years of signing the contract.
A total of 1.69 billion zł are available for purchases, of which 1.39 for the first part of this project. The offer was supposed to be known in September, but the deadline was shifted because manufacturers had to answer nearly 500 questions. Today, at noon, the commission opened five envelopes.
Škoda valued its offer at 1.608 billion zlotys, followed by Swiss Stadler (1.656 billion), Spanish CAF (1.749 billion), French Alstom with Konstal factory in Chorzow, Poland (1.797 billion) and Austrian Siemens in cooperation with Newag from Polish Novi Sad (2,213) billion zlotys).
The metro in Warsaw is quite young, it has been operating since 1995, the second line since 2015.
Pilsen Škoda Transportation has already won a tender for trams for the Polish metropolis for billions of crowns, but the city canceled the competition this August. According to the press, Warsaw 213 trams from Škoda came to 16.6 billion crowns, which is more than total Škoda Transportation’s total income. The city has canceled the tender because it would not have enough money to purchase the trams.
