Starting in May 2008, we began acquiring a total of 146 new U5 underground trains from Bombardier , and the last of these will be delivered in 2015. This order is worth €300 million, and has not received any subsidies. The U5-50 subtype entered service in February 2012. These trains allow passengers to board at any point along their 50-metre length. They trains comprise two 25-metre-long one-way carriages that can be coupled to create a 50-metre-long train.

Meanwhile in December 2011, VGF decided to purchase another 78 U5 vehicles. Forty of these are 25-metre-long two-way carriages and the other 38 are one-way carriages that, when coupled with one another, will make 19 U5-50 trains. Delivery will commence in 2014 and continue until 2017. Together with the ten new S carriages delivered in December 2013, this amounts to a total investment of around €192 million.

So that the new U5 trains can be coupled with older-generation vehicles such as the U4 carriages built by Siemens, in August 2010 VGF started to upgrade the U4 trains that entered service in 1994 and 1995 and refit their interiors to match the U5. By 2013, our central workshop will have refitted 37 of these trains and given them all a much-needed overhaul. The costs per vehicle come to €632,000, and the total cost will be €23.28 million.

As part of the modernisation, the trains are also being fitted with video cameras. It hasn’t been possible, though, to install air conditioning as well. VGF had to decide against this because the units that would have had to be installed on the roofs weigh up to 1.5 tonnes, and the roofs were not designed to carry such weight. That’s why only the two driver cabins are being fitted with smaller-sized air conditioning units.