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ALSTOM News
INTRODUCING ALSTOM INNOVIA: EFFICIENT SOLUTIONS FOR URBAN AND AIRPORT TRANSIT
Designed to serve airports, rapidly growing cities and dense urban areas, the Innovia automated people mover (APM) and Innovia monorail systems are characterised by exceptional route flexibility, outstanding availability and high efficiency.
Alstom’s Innovia product range represents the mass transit solution for airports, rapidly growing cities and dense urban areas: quick, cost-friendly realisation times, small to high passenger capacities, eco-friendly vehicles and slim infrastructures for seamless insertion into the cityscape. Paloma Moran, VP Urban Platform at Alstom, talks about everything this product range offers.
Innovia solutions – what are they exactly?
The Innovia train family consists of two solutions: automated people movers (APMs) and monorails. Both are fully automated and driverless, come with their own dedicated infrastructure and provide connections above and away from the city, namely urban areas and airports.
APMs are ideally suited to airport contexts, covering short distances between terminals or from airport to metro terminus. The trains are made up of single cars that are coupled, giving a lot of operational flexibility: at peak hours you can couple extra cars to increase capacity up to 900 passengers per train.
How do Innovia solutions differ from automated metros or light rail, and what advantages do they have?
Unlike most metros and trams, Innovia solutions have always been fully automated and driverless. This allows for the shortest headways and the highest availability rates, making them ideal for environments with changing capacity needs and shorter travel times – like airports, for example.
Unlike most metros and trams with metal wheels, Innovia solutions are fitted with rubber tyres, which not only makes them quieter to operate but lets them tackle tighter bends (curve radii up to 22m for APMs), and steep gradients (up to 6%), enabling seamless integration into dense areas.
How do Innovia solutions improve the life of passengers and residents?
Because of its elevated infrastructure, the monorail literally flies over the city, bypassing traffic congestion and significantly reducing travel times. Innovia solutions also help to reduce urban noise levels: because they are fitted with rubber tyres, they are relatively quiet to operate.
Alstom is constantly working to adapt its systems to the multiple challenges of urban environments. For example, in Singapore, the new APMs will be fitted with smart windows that automatically mist over whenever the train approaches close-by residential buildings.
