FRENCH METRO SYSTEMS FOR EXPORT: TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENT OF ROLLING STOCK

Those responsible for the Paris metro, on which very extensive modernisation and development schemes have been carried out, are often requested, through the intermediary of SOFRETU, the RATP (Paris Transport Authority) engineering consultancy subsidiary, to advise and provide assistance to large towns which plan to build a metro railway system. It was in this way that the metro system with trains running on rubber tires, which had been researched and developed by the RATP, has also been built abroad in Montreal, Mexico City and Santiago. Likewise the rolling stock operated on the RATP Regional Express Railway (RER) served as the basis for the design of the rolling stock adopted for the metro in Cairo. More recently modern techniques for electric traction chopper equipment, the construction of aluminium coachwork and automatice driving systems, developed on the most recent Paris metro rolling stock, have been chosen for Caracas metro. The experience gained by the RATP thus backs up SOFRETU's engineering consultancy activities.