ABB recently received contracts from Brookville Equipment to improve public transportation with its Liberty Modern Streetcar platform in two major American cities.The first award is the result of an option order for two cars exercised by Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) authority after commissioning Brookville’s new streetcars earlier this year. DART’s new vehicles operate on the 1.6 mile Downtown-to-Oak Cliff line.
The second award is to equip six cars for the new M1-Rail project in Detroit, which is a 6.6 mile track on Woodward Avenue in the city’s center and North End neighborhoods.
“The main innovation behind the design of the Liberty Modern Streetcar is its ability to manage off-wire operation. The streetcar will operate on battery on part of its route,” said Marion Van Fosson, president of Brookville Equipment Corp. “The strong engineering collaboration between Brookville and ABB’s rail and traction team allows cities to benefit from efficient streetcar access to areas without overhead wires.”
“For both contracts, ABB’s scope of supply consists of traction converters Bordline CC400, cooling units HEX30, as well as the AC traction motors,” said Elvis Dzindo, local product group manager at ABB rail traction systems in Richmond, Virginia. “ABB satisfies the ‘Buy America’ requirements utilizing our U.S. based manufacturing facilities and engineering team.”
Many cities have difficulty zoning for overhead wires. In these cases, the absence of overhead wires would restrict access of the streetcars. However in Dallas, ABB technology will allow the “off-wire” operation of the streetcars. In Detroit, the streetcars will be able to travel without the aid of an overhead catenary system (OCS) for 60-percent of the corridor.
“Because of its unique compactness and high flexibility, ABB’s technology is becoming very popular in North America for streetcars and train/metro upgrade applications,” says Daniel Simounet, director of transportation for ABB North America. “ABB is offering a well proven traction technology platform. Our standardized modular design concept makes it cost effective for customers to integrate and operate in a new vehicle or for the upgrade of existing fleets.”
