Thales Canada Lands STM CBTC Contract
Written by William C. Vantuono, Editor-in-Chief
STM photo.
Société de Transport de Montréal (STM) has awarded Thales Canada a contract for a CBTC (communications-based train control) system for the Montreal Métro Blue Line. Thales’ SelTrac™ G8 technology—the first CBTC system to be deployed on the STM network—will be installed on the entire existing, 12-station Snowdon to Saint-Michel Blue Line and the new 6-km (3.72-mile), five-station Saint-Michel to Anjou eastward extension. The contract includes design, manufacturing, installation and testing, as well as five years of maintenance.
Thales noted that SelTrac™ G8 “will significantly modernize the network and replace the current legacy technology to provide customers with improved, more reliable journeys, and STM with the ability to increase the train frequency.”
“Customers who deploy SelTrac™ G8 can benefit from lifelong innovation enabled through new digital architecture,” Thales said. “The new generation also provides extensive services to operate and maintain the systems more efficiently. It is also autonomous (driverless) operation and 5G-ready. The autonomous capabilities are designed to make both greenfield and brownfield CBTC deployments faster and easier than ever, with rapid train conversion and minimal trackside equipment.”
SelTrac™ G8 is described as “Green CBTC,” a “customer-selectable and configurable option. SelTrac™ is inherently energy-efficient due to the high level of automation with CBTC. We developed Green CBTC to further optimize energy usage for metro operators, providing energy savings of 14-18%. Green CBTC is a package of tools and services designed to accelerate recovery from disruption, maximize regenerative braking, minimize peak power consumption and visualize energy use during timetable construction. It is an optimized solution, lowering installation and life cycle costs, flexible architecture and evolutionary hardware platforms. SelTrac™ G8 is agnostic to communication networks. Enhanced services improve maintainability and increase availability.”
Montreal’s 71-km (44-mile) metro network is the second-busiest rapid transit network in Canada and the fourth-busiest in North America. Thales said the company “is familiar with the STM network, operation and technology, having provided an interlocking system across the network for the past six years. We will leverage this knowledge and build on the partnership to deliver the Blue Line project. The SelTrac™ solution that will be installed in Montreal is in service across the largest and busiest networks around the world, including New York City Transit, Singapore, London, Hong Kong, Vancouver, Dubai and Doha.”
