TVR Caen

Encounter in the city center

Lines

Final stop Hérouville Saint-Clair

The entry and exit point at the Maréchal Juin station, the way to and from the nearby depot was covered by the vehicles with the auxiliary drive

Threading funnel in front of the Maréchal Juin station

TVR Caen was a predominantly track-guided local public transport system in the French city of Caen in Normandy , where the abbreviation TVR stood for the system Transport sur voie réservée of the manufacturer Bombardier Transportation . In the regular line service with passengers, the vehicles were guided on a track as so-called Tramway sur pneumatiques (tram on pneumatic tires) with direct power supply through a single-pole overhead line , only on the way to the depot or in the event of operational disruptions they were freely guided with the auxiliary drive without overhead lines and lane guidance. This system was only found in Caen, a very similar one - but with a two-pole overhead line - exists in Nancy .

The two lines in Caen were first from transport companies de Companie transport l'Agglomération Caennaise operated (CTAC). Keolis , a subsidiary of SNCF , was later the operator of the system, which also appeared under the marketing name "Twisto".

description

The double articulated cars used in Caen 24 were way vehicles and had regular for the operation off the tracking license plates . They were 24.5 meters long, 2.5 meters wide and could carry 154 passengers. Their empty weight was 25.5 tons, the output of the electric motor 300 kilowatts.

The vehicles were largely identical to those in Nancy, only the type of power supply was different (a single-arm pantograph in Caen, two pantograph poles in Nancy). They were equipped with a 200-kilowatt diesel generator to generate electricity so that the access to the depot, located in the municipality of Hérouville-Saint-Clair, could be manually guided via a public road, without a guardrail and contact wire .

history

The planning for a new local transport system began in 1988. Since a classic tram was considered too expensive, the choice fell on the TVR system. Nevertheless, resistance arose in the population, which was only overcome after long negotiations. After a construction period of three years and numerous test drives, it was finally opened on November 18, 2002. A total of 15.7 kilometers of route were put into operation, on which the two lines A and B operated. They shared a trunk line that crossed the city in a north-south direction, and branched out at its ends. An extension of line A was also planned at times.

Line A ran between the terminus Caen Campus 2 in the north and Ifs Jean Vilar in the south. Line B ran from Hérouville Saint-Clair to Caen Grâce de Dieu. Both shared the main line Copernic – city center – Poincaré, which also served the station. The routes were completely on their own track body, all endpoints had turning loops . In Ifs and Hérouville there were fully covered transfer facilities to the shuttle buses. There were 34 stops, the average speed of the vehicles was 18.5 km / h.

Due to the high frequency of journeys, the system was used well with an average of 34,000 passengers a day. This increased the number of journeys by 14 percent compared to the time before the system was introduced. The increase is distributed differently. While around ten percent more passengers were counted during the week, the proportion on Sundays rose by up to 50 percent. Overall, the two lines had a share of 42 percent of the total number of passengers in 2003.

Due to the high susceptibility to breakdowns, which could also lead to capacity problems during rush hour , and the high maintenance costs of 500,000 euros, the originally expected financial advantage of the TVR system has turned into the opposite. On December 14, 2011, it was therefore decided to shut down the TVR system in 2016 and to build a conventional tram on the same routes by 2018, especially since Bombardier had previously announced that it would no longer pursue the TVR concept.

Later, Joël Bruneau of the conservative UMP , who has been Mayor of Caen since April 5, 2014 , announced that he would keep the TVR. Six months later, however, he reiterated the original decision in favor of the classic tram. Their rails were laid on the previous lanes of the TVR, with some grass tracks being created. The stops have been lengthened so that trams 34 meters in length can be used. Ultimately, however, the conversion was delayed, so that the TVR system could only be shut down on December 31, 2017. The new Caen tram finally went into operation on July 27, 2019.