RB Rail, the joint venture delivering the project to construct a new 250km/h standard-gauge railway between Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Polish border, has commenced a one-month negotiation period with the shortlisted bidders for the new railway’s control command and signalling (CCS) contract.
RB Rail says the purpose of the negotiations is to further develop and improve the technical and financial proposals submitted by the bidders in order to identify the best possible solution, both technically and financially.
The four shortlisted bidders, which were announced in August 2023, are:
- GTS Deutschland and Hitachi Rail (now a joint bid following Hitachi’s acquisition of Thales GTS)
- a joint venture of Indra Sistemas and AŽD Praha
- the SKGN Baltics consortium of Siemens Mobility Latvia, Siemens Mobility, GRK Suomi, NRC Group Finland and Kontron Transportation, and
- a partnership of Alstom Transport, Alstom Baltics, Cobra and KZA Krakow.
As well as ETCS, the chosen contractor will install the Future Railway Mobile Communication System (FRMCS) that will replace GSM-R, interlockings, and a traffic management system. RB Rail says it expects to sign the contract with the preferred bidder by the end of this year.
“Given the scale of this procurement, the commission has invested significant time to ensure that all requirements and criteria are clearly defined and well understood,” says Aiga Benfelde, acting head of procurement at RB Rail and chair of the project’s Procurement Commission.
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