Alstom and the Metropolitan Mass Transit System Ltd. (NTA) signed a contract worth more than $104 million that includes the development, manufacturing, procurement, supply, installation, testing, commissioning, warranty, and maintenance of the signaling and train control for the new Tel Aviv Tramway Red Line project, Alstom announced.

The maintenance services cover a period of 10 years plus an option of six additional years and an option for supplying the signaling systems for an additional 30 vehicles.

The Red Line will begin operations on October 2021, and is planned to service approximately 200,000 passengers every day.

This 14.9-mile-long tramway line will pass through five municipalities (Bat Yam, Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Ramat Gan, Bnei Brak, and Petach Tikva) and will include a 7.45-mile-long tunnel section to be built under the cities of Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, and Bnei Brak.

The Red Line is one of the most heavily used traffic corridors in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, and the population density along the corridor is one of the highest in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area.

Alstom will supply the widely proven and constantly upgraded Urbalis 400 CBTC system, a solution for urban transit operators aiming at maximizing performance, capacity, and availability.

Urbalis has a flexible and scalable Control System architecture, based on moving block principle, which safely optimizes the maximum of available rail network capacity, and allows mixed-mode operation such as Red Line combination of tunnels and interface to

The Red Line signaling project in the Dan region is divided into two parts: construction and maintenance. The execution of the project is expected to last about 44 months, and will include the system and product design; procurement and production; equipment installation along the line and on the train cars, which are manufactured in China; testing and commissioning. The first stage of the system and product design and development, will begin next week, with accordance with the Notice to Proceed received from NTA.

The project team will include 40-50 Israelis who will work from Israel, and dozens more at Alstom's sites in France, Italy, Turkey, China, Spain, and India.

Alstom has been active in Israel for more than 25 years and is a partner in significant projects.