Trams in Rosario
| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Locale | Rosario, Santa Fe |
| Transit type | Rapid transit |
| Technical | |
| System length | 20 km (planned first phase) 192 km (historical pique) |
| Track gauge | 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in) standard gauge |
The Rosario Tramway is a planned mass transit tramway network in Rosario, Argentina currently in the bidding process stages. The project was assessed by Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat Valenciana and is largely inspired by the network the company runs in Valencia, though at one point a metro system was envisioned. The municipal and provincial governments have already undertaken discussions with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China for financing the project, as well as Siemens to provide the . Once the project is complete, it will be the first time trams have run in the city on a mass scale since the closure of the city's tramway network in 1963, which had reached a maximum extension of 192 km.
The project was first put forward as a metro network which, upon the completion of the Córdoba Underground, would mean that the city would have become the third in the country with an underground network as currently only the Buenos Aires Underground is in operation. An underground system for the city had first been proposed in 1930 following the success of the Subte in Buenos Aires, though this was never carried-out with trams being favoured instead.
The contemporary project to build a Metro in Rosario first appeared in 2008, but was dropped in 2010. After 4 years of silence on the project, it was again put on the table in July 2014 but was approached with caution, evaluating all possibilities before undertaking expensive underground works. By November of that year, the Chinese companies CITIC Group and China Machinery Engineering Corporation both showed interest in the project and both had invested in Argentine infrastructure before, in the purchase of CITIC-CNR cars for the Buenos Aires Underground and investment in infrastructure on the Belgrano Cargas network operated by the state-owned freight company Trenes Argentinos Cargas y Logística. Both an overground and underground network were put forward to the companies, while the chosen project would be carried-out on a turnkey basis.
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