ARGENTINA’s minister of transport Mr Guillermo Dietrich visited the port of Buenos Aires on May 24 to witness the delivery of a batch of 156 Chinese-built wagons for Argentinean Trains Cargo.

THE Brazilian city of Salvador added four stations to its metro network on May 23 with the start of commercial operations on the 6km section of Line 2 from Rodoviária to Pituaçu.

THE Argentinean government signed a $US 49.5m loan agreement with Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) in Tokyo on May 19, which will finance the rollout of Automatic Train Stop (ATS) on the Buenos Aires suburban rail network.

A’REX, the Korean consortium which operates the 58km express rail link between Incheon Airport, Gimpo Airport and Seoul, has expressed interest in the Reais 8bn ($US 2.6bn) Brasilia - Goiânia passenger rail project to Brazil’s National Land Transport Agency (ANTT), provided that changes can be made to the scheme.

A tender notice for contracts to build and operate an 18.5km light rail line in the Brazilian city of Salvador was published in the official journal of the state of Bahia on May 3.

ALSTOM achieved a 6% increase in sales and a 15% rise in Ebit for the year ending March 31 2017, while its order backlog reached a new record of €34.78bn.

A consortium of Barcelona metro operator TMB and Spanish engineering consultancy Ayesa has been awarded a three-year contract to supervise a project to increase capacity on Lima metro Line 1.

THE mayor of Quito Mr Mauricio Rodas announced on May 3 that international lenders have accepted changes to the contracting structure for the Quito metro project after Brazilian construction company Odebrecht pulled out of the consortium building the line.

ALSTOM has begun delivering a batch of 70 additional Metropolis metro cars to Panama Metro, which will be used to increase capacity on Line 1.

THE government of São Paulo has announced that bidding will open on July 4 for the public-private partnership (PPP) concession to operate lines 5 and 17 of the Brazilian city’s metro network.