Ayacucho tram

Ayacucho tram
Loyola stop
Basic information
Country	Colombia
city	Medellin
opening	March 31, 2016
operator	Metro de Medellín Ltda
Infrastructure
Route length	4.3 km
Stops	9
business
Lines	1
Line length	4.3 km
vehicles	12 STE5
Top speed	70 km / h
statistics
Passengers	90,000 a day
Residents in the catchment area	350 thousand

The Ayacucho tram is a so-called " Tramway sur pneumatiques " ( French for "tram on rubber tires") in the Colombian city of Medellín . The radial line operated according to the French Translohr system connects the city center with the east of the city and was opened 64 years after the old tram system was abandoned.

In the second largest city in the country, the name “Tranvía de Ayacucho” has become established, derived from the Avenida Ayacucho arterial road running to the southeast , the course of which is largely followed by the tram. The system is run by the transport company Empresa de Transporte Masivo del Valle de Aburrá - Metro de Medellín Ltda , which also operates the local metro and in whose network the Ayacucho tram is integrated as line TA.

history

After a conventional tram network already existed in Medellín from 1921 to 1951 and a conventional trolleybus system from 1929 to 1951 , the city signed a contract on May 13, 2011 with the French company Lohr Industrie to set up a Translohr system. Construction work began in 2012 and the vehicles arrived in 2014. A first test drive took place on July 13, 2015, before preliminary operations began on October 15, 2015 and finally operations began on March 31, 2016. The Ayacucho Tram cost $ 300 million to build. It is the first and so far only such system in South America .

route

The route is 4.3 kilometers long, has two lanes throughout and is used by up to 90,000 passengers a day. The average gradient is five percent, the highest gradient twelve percent, the tightest curve radius 20 meters. In the immediate catchment area of the line are three barrios , in which together around 350,000 people live. In total, the TA line serves the following nine stops , including four transfer stations:

San Antonio
San Jose
Pabellon del Agua EPM
Bicentenario
Buenos Aires
Miraflores
Loyola
Alejandro Echavarría
Oriente

vehicles

Twelve five-part, 2.22-meter-wide and 39-meter-long two-way vehicles of the type STE5 are used on the Ayacucho tram . This vehicle length can only be found in Medellín. They can each carry 311 people and together cost 42.3 million euros.