Cluj-Napoca City Hall delays metro line supervision tender again

Cluj-Napoca City Hall has extended the deadline for submitting offers for the RON 211 million (EUR 42.4 million) contract for supervising the works on Metro Line M1 by over a month, until January 12, 2024. This contract represents the largest consultancy contract in transportation in Romania to date.

The city initially set a deadline in early November, then delayed it to December, and now again for January, according to documents consulted by Economedia.

The supervision contract is funded through the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, but the PNRR milestone sets the signing of all contracts by December 31, 2023, which may no longer be the case.

The design phase of the first metro line in Romania aside from the one in Bucharest began on September 1, 2023, and the government is preparing record compensation of RON 283 million for property owners who will be expropriated.

Cluj’s planned Metro Line M1 has 21 stations and costs RON 9 billion (EUR 1.8 billion), of which RON 1.5 billion is from PNRR funds, and the completion period is 8 years. The consortium consisting of Gulermak (Turkey) - Alstom - Arcada is the contractor. Gulermak will bring to Cluj the team that worked on the metro in Dubai, according to the ClubFeroviar publication.

"In the first stage, the works on 9.16 km will be completed, including the section Sfânta Maria - Europa Unită (9 stations) and the depot. The works in this stage, funded by PNRR, must be completed by the end of August 2026. In the second stage, the funding will ensure the construction of the sections Țara Moților - Sfânta Maria (7 stations) and Piața Mărăști - Muncii (3 stations), totaling 11.87 km," stated transport minister Sorin Grindeanu on December 29, 2022, at the signing of the financing contract.

Metro trains in Cluj-Napoca will run at intervals of 90 seconds, and the capacity will range from 15,000 to 20,000 passengers, less than half of the projected capacity for Metro Lines M5 and M6 in Bucharest.

"Cluj Napoca is the second-largest city in Romania by population, and traffic values on DN 1 Florești - Cluj Napoca are comparable to those on DN 1 Otopeni - Bucharest (a 6-lane road)," according to the Explanatory Note of the Government Decision for approving the technical and economic indicators.

(Photo source: Emil Boc on Facebook)