Metropoliten to buy three more underground trains

Sofia Municipality will buy three more trains for the Sofia metro, Dnevnik daily reported on December 14 2009. The trains will be purchased from Russia's Metrovagonmash.

This will be the first purchase of trains since 2007, when the municipality bought three trains for 13.5 million euro, Dnevnik said.

Metropoliten, the municipal firm that operates the Sofia metro, now has 21 trains in its fleet, nine of which were bought new. All trains are Russian made and bought from Metrovagonmash.

The city hall has reportedly decided to stick with the Russian company because an import from another manufacturer would require staff to be retrained and allocating additional funds to set up a separate maintenance and spare parts base.

Since Obelya and Mladost were linked in September 2009, the traffic has increased substantially and the existing fleet cannot cope with it, according to the city hall, which decided to buy more trains to help alleviate the situation.

Source: sofiaecho.com