Bombardier Austria sees great potential in Chinese tram market

Transportation company Bombardier Austria has Thursday said it sees China as a huge potential market for its trams in the near future.

Germar Wacker, President of Light Rail Vehicles for the Austrian operations of the multinational company, told Austria Press Agency in an interview that China "is the market that definitely has the greatest growth potential over the next ten years."

He said China has for some time now been focusing on improving mobility with subway systems and that suburbs have increasingly been connected to the transportation infrastructure of cities. For this purpose trams are much cheaper and also faster to implement than subway systems, he added.

Bombardier Austria has already managed to secure contracts to manufacture a total of 33 trams for both Suzhou and Nanjing. They will be developed in Vienna, and manufactured to completion by CSR Corporation Limited, with which the company has a license agreement, in China.

Wacker said various tram systems are also currently being tested in China by a number of manufacturers with expansion plans already confirmed, and tenders currently being prepared. He said Bomardier also hopes to be involved, particularly as there "could be large quantities involved."

Bombardier Austria currently exports about 80 percent of the trams it manufactures, and also sees Eastern Europe, including Russia, as having good growth potential.