Monorail Innovia 300 opens in Sao Paulo

The first monorail in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the Linha-15 Parata ( Silver-15 line) opens commercially to public today after several delays and a year of testing, connecting Ipiranga and Cidade Tiradendis will open part of final stretch.

The Eastern Express monorail consortium  led by Bombardier Transportation has delivered its game-changing fully automated   £1.04billion, $1.6bn INNOVIA Monorail 300 system for the new São Paulo Metro Line 15. Connecting the Vila Prudente and Cidade Tiradentes urbanizations, the new driverless monorail system  scanning 24 km  will connect 17 stations and will provide comfortable mass transit for  500, 000 São Paulo’s commuters daily. Fifty-four 7-car driverless INNOVIA Monorail 300 trains (378 cars) are equipped with CITYFLO 650 automatic train control technology, which allows for shorter wait-times in stations and higher serve levels. The monorail system will reduce the  travel time from two hours by car to just 50 minutes.

São Paulo has five metro lines – Line 1 (Blue), Line 2 (Green), Line 3 (Red), Line 4 (Yellow) and Line 5 (Lilac). The new monorail system will be an extension of the 14.7km-long metro line 2 currently operating between Vila Madalena and Vila Prudente with 14 underground stations.

Construction of this line began in January 1991.

Vila Prudente and Tamanduateí are the latest stations added to the route in August and September 2010 respectively.

The Expresso Tiradentes will be a further 24km-long extension from Vila Prudente to Cidade Tiradentes with 17 stations in between.

The project  featuring Bombardier’s INNOVIA 300 system,  will transport 40,000 passengers per hour per direction. The technology will be complemented with the company’s CITYFLO 650 automatic train control technology to enable driverless operation of the trains.

Bombardier will design and supply electrical and mechanical equipment for the extension. It will also supply 54 seven-car trains and provide project management, systems engineering and integration, testing and commissioning for new trains and signalling systems.

The vehicles will be engineered, designed and tested at Bombardier’s site in Canada. The first few cars will be manufactured in Pittsburgh, USA and the others in Brazil at the manufacturer’s plant in Hortolândia.

The INNOVIA Monorail 300 system operates at a top speed of 80km/h on 750V DC power. It can be configured in two-eight car sets to transport 1,000 passengers per trip.

The Monorail 300 system has an aluminium body, steel under frame and a composite end cap. Each car has two bi-parting doors per side and a roof mounted twin heating, ventilating and air-conditioning (HVAC) unit. It is the first monorail with an inter-car walk away that provides free passenger movements and enhances passenger safety.