Flemish Mobility Minister Annick De Ridder (N-VA) wants the public transport company De Lijn to work out a new framework agreement for a planned order of some 30 streetcars for Antwerp.
The order is with Spanish rolling stock manufacturer Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles (CAF). The price would suddenly be 1.5 times higher, and the sets would be delivered more than two years later than planned.
€25 million more expensive
The original plan was for De Lijn to deploy 30 additional streetcars in Antwerp by the end of 2027. These should replace the slow and less ecological buses.
De Lijn ordered those streetcars from CAF, the Spanish manufacturer with which it has been a customer. A streetcar costs about 2.5 million euros, so the order is worth about 75 million euros.
But now it appears there is a problem with the order. According to Flemish Mobility Minister Annick De Ridder (N-VA), the price would suddenly be 1.5 times higher, more specifically, over 100 million euros. Moreover, the streetcars would also be fewer and could only be delivered in “around 50 months,” not before 2029.
New framework agreement
The N-VA minister finds this unacceptable and asks De Lijn to create a new framework agreement. According to the Minister, former Mobility Minister Lydia Peeters (Open Vld) also abandoned the dossier despite the Antwerp city council’s insistence.
De Ridder herself, who has Antwerp roots, wanted to speed up the dossier and hoped to place the order this spring. “If we were to follow the existing framework contract, it would mean that, as Minister, I would not be able to take delivery of the streetcars myself,” De Ridder said.
Thus, the case threatens to stifle the Minister and Antwerp’s plans to ‘de-bus’ and shift to more sustainable mobility via extra streetcars.
CAF already unpopular
De Ridder is now looking for a solution and is considering re-entering the market and launching a new tender with De Lijn.
Noteworthy: Spanish company CAF recently won a tender to build hundreds of trains for Belgian railroad company NMBS/SNCB. However, the Council of State suspended that decision in mid-April because NMBS/SNCB had not been sufficiently transparent about the method used to evaluate the various bids.
Alstom, which employs 3,000 people at its Bruges and Charleroi sites, and Siemens, which also competed for the mega-contract, had gone to the Council of State.
The decision was also received poorly politically. Several MPs, for example, are pushing for a hearing with the NMBS/SNCB top on the order for the Spanish trains.
