Train maker backs double-deckers
Jacob Saulwick
March 13, 2012
![Still in demand ... double-decker trains.](http://images.smh.com.au/2012/03/12/3121661/ipad-art-wide-5_Trainmaker2-420x0.jpg)
Still in demand … double-decker trains. Photo: Tamara Dean
THERE is no need to scrap double-deck trains to run more frequent services through crowded cities such as Sydney, a senior executive at one of Europe’s largest train manufacturers says.
The state government, which announced plans yesterday to protect future transport corridors in the city’s north-west, is continuing to pursue plans that would convert a portion of Sydney’s train system to single-deck metro-style trains.
But a senior vice-president at Alstom Transport, the world’s largest manufacturer of high-speed trains and a major urban rail builder, said the European experience showed there was no need to switch to single-deck carriages that had fewer seats.
”We should not consider that a double-deck train is not fit for very dense traffic and urban traffic,” said Francois Lacote, who was in Sydney last week to help Alstom increase its business in Australia.
His comments fit into a wider debate about the future of the CityRail network, after transport bureaucrats began working on plans in 2009 to shift to single-deck on some services.
The argument for doing so is that single-deck trains take less time to load and unload passengers than heavier double-deck trains, which also take longer to brake and speed up again.
But Mr Lacote cited the example of Paris’s RER A line, which uses double-deck carriages running at 90-second intervals. Sydney’s trains currently run at three-minute intervals, or a maximum of 20 trains through any point of the network at one time.
There has been a surge of interest in Australian rail projects from international construction and transport companies.
Besides Alstom, which intends to participate in a consortium bidding for work on the north-west rail link, industry sources say Chinese and Spanish rail firms will also bid for work on the line.
The Transport Minister, Gladys Berejiklian, joined the Premier, Barry O’Farrell, yesterday in announcing the government would lock in further corridors for transport to be built beyond Rouse Hill at the far end of the north-west rail link.
It is looking at two corridor options to preserve land for transport in the north-west which is expected to house another 200,000 people in the next 25 to 30 years.
One would connect the north-west rail link to the Richmond Line south of Riverstone station; another would head west from Rouse Hill and on to Schofields station and then Marsden Park.
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