Amsterdam’s new 11km North-South metro line – which will operate as ‘Line 52’ – formally commenced operation across the city on 22 July 2018.

The line provides a new link from the Amsterdam Zuid (South) interchange to the central districts, and then on to the city’s northern reaches across the River IJ. Around 6kms of its 9.8km route will be underground, with end-to-end journey times of around 16 minutes and peak time headways of 4 mins.

Ricardo has been providing technical support for the project since 2009, with its teams of rolling stock and infrastructure experts working across various stages of the route’s development, from infrastructure and traction power supply through to replacement of aspects of the metro vehicles’ safety systems with automatic train control – specifically communications-based train control (CBTC).

‘We are very proud to have played such an extensive role in this important new metro line,’ commented Maarten Spaargaren, consulting director at Ricardo’s Utrecht Technical Centre. ‘Our involvement in such a major infrastructure project demonstrates our extensive technical expertise of rolling stock and rail infrastructure, and their many complex interactions. Ricardo is one of very few organizations with the scale and capability to support such technically challenging work across multiple domains.’

Multi-discipline expertise, from train control to maintenance

Ricardo seconded specialists to support the CBTC aspects of the project. This spanned the development of the specifications for the new automatic system through to tender evaluation, inspection and, ultimately, the implementation of CBTC in the vehicles.

Ricardo advised in the field of design and inspection relating to the implementation of CBTC into the existing vehicle fleet that will transfer to the new line, as well as expertise regarding verification and validation activities, and in the standard tests of reliability, availability, maintainability and safety (RAMS).

The team provided technical contract management of the traction power supply dossiers including reviews of the design documentation, advising the city authorities on any deviations, supervising factory-based tests and inspecting the traction power supply installations.

The opening of Line 52 increases length of Amsterdam’s metro system to approximately 80km (50 miles). Should plans for any further expansion of the route emerge, Ricardo’s teams will be ready to contribute the experience and insight gained from this challenging but thoroughly rewarding project.