A new sense of speed Bombardier

With 1700 locomotives built in its historical plant at Vado Ligure since 1905, and with its know-how in the high and very high-speed sectors, Bombardier is today the leading producer of electric locomotives in Italy. Agnese Bresin talks to Roberto Tazzioli, Bombardier Transportation Italy’s president and managing director.

The Very High Speed train V300ZEFIRO in partnership with AnsaldoBreda

A NEW SENSE OF SPEED

IN the near future there will be trains travelling across Italy at speeds of up to 360km/h. This is in large part owing to Bombardier’s dedication to hightech innovation, which helped it achieve a revenue of over €300 million in 2010. The company has been active in the rail sector for over a century and is determined to maintain its world-leading position.

Bombardier Transportation Italy is part of the Bombardier Transportation Group. Based in Berlin and chaired by André Navarri, the company currently has the biggest rail fleet worldwide – around 100,000 vehicles produced to date. Bombardier Italy itself has around 800 staff who are employed over its two sites in the country. The first is in Vado Ligure, in the province of Savona, Liguria, where locomotives have been produced since 1905. In 2007 the Vado Ligure unit became the first European technological pole of excellence for the production of TRAXX DC locomotives for the transportation of goods. The other unit is located in Rome and is called ‘Rail Control Solutions’. This is an engineering centre dedicated to the development of a wide range of control systems, from railway control through to signalling and traffic management.

Bombardier Transportation Italy serves the biggest rail operators in Italy. Trenitalia, the Italian state-owned and primary operator of trains in Italy, regularly purchases Bombardier locomotives for regional and national transport routes.

In 2010 Trenitalia ordered 50 V300ZEFIRO trains produced in partnership with AnsaldoBreda, which are very high-speed trainsets operating with a combination of Bombardier’s Zefiro technology and AnsaldoBreda’s V250 technology. . Zefiro in Italy and around the world

Zefiro is the most widely-used technology in the worldwide locomotive industry today. The V300ZEFIRO version of this was entirely

ABB

ABB is the world’s largest independent supplier of power and automation products and systems to train manufacturers and railway operators. It offers a portfolio of innovative and reliable technologies that delivers a comprehensive range of rail applications from rolling stock to fixed installations. In rolling stock, Bombardier and ABB have a long history of cooperation with respect to traction components for regional and commuter trains, as well as high speed trains and locomotives. Globally, ABB is number one in rail traction transformers with more than 50 percent market share. Traction transformers step down electrical voltage from the catenary so it can be used on-board the train to power motors and auxiliary systems such as heating and lighting. ABB traction transformers can be found on numerous Bombardier’s flagship locomotives, regional and high speed trains such as the TRAXX family of locomotives, the SPACIUM EMU train series and the high-speed V300ZEFIRO trains to be operated by TrenItalia.

developed in Italy, designed by the famous Italian automobile designer Bertone and produced in the regions of Liguria, Tuscany and Campany. It is set to become the ‘Italian train for Europe’.

As a group, in 2009 Bombardier Transportation agreed to supply the Chinese Ministry of Railways with 80 ZEFIRO380 trains – an order worth over one billion euros. ZEFIRO380 trains will be able to reach the highest commercial speed in the world – up to 360km/h. Further countries set to purchase Bombardier trains and transport solutions in the near future include India, where the company is going to build the Mumbai underground system; Brazil, where it is set to construct the biggest monorail worldwide, capable of serving 500,000 commuters each day; and Saudi Arabia, with the construction of a monorail.

More space with Spacium

V300ZEFIRO is not the only groundbreaking product from Bombardier Italy. Spacium 3.O6 is a train that has been specifically designed for commuter traffic in the large urban areas of Europe and is currently circulating in the metropolitan area around Paris. There are a few things that make this model unique: the first is its size, as the carriages are shorter, articulated and wider – allowing a 100m train to carry nearly 1000 people, many more than the regional double-decker trains currently used in Italy. In addition, the doors are bigger and provide greater accessibility, shortening the jump-on/jump-off time by a third compared to traditional trains.

Finally, Spacium is a high-tech transport solution, with its video surveillance system, Wi-Fi connection, LCD screens, LED light system and a smart air conditioning system that regularly adjusts to the number of passengers on board – thus significantly reducing energy consumption. Mr Tazzioli describes it as “a concentrate of technology and comfort.”

Trains vs airplanes

Mr Tazzioli, himself an engineer, has a broad vision of the development of the transport sector in the future: “Mobility is growing, connection among cities is becoming a key factor and the demand for high-speed is enormous,” he explains. Apparently high-speed rail lines might reach 70,000km by 2025.

“Trains are becoming more and more competitive with airplanes,” he continues. Statistics say that for a three-hour train journey, 80 per cent of the passengers choose to travel by train rather than by airplane. “It is a rather understandable choice if you calculate the door-to-door travel time.”

The fact that it produces both trains and airplanes gives Bombardier the flexibility to effect a technology ‘crossover’ between the two sectors: i.e. technological solutions designed for airplanes can be applied or adjusted to trains and vice versa. From this point of view, Bombardier can certainly offer ‘a new sense of speed’. n