DPP Tries Again for Up to 140 Battery Trolleybuses, With the Clause That Sank the First Tender Gone

Dopravní podnik hl. m. Prahy has opened a public tender for up to 140 new battery trolleybuses: up to 80 articulated vehicles 18 metres long and up to 60 standard ones of 12 metres. The winner gets a five-year framework contract with an estimated total value of CZK 2.64 billion excluding VAT. DPP announced the tender on Monday 26 October and says it has secured EU co-financing for the vehicles from the IROP programme and the TRANSGov call of the Modernisation Fund.

The fleet is for routes that do not exist yet. DPP says the vehicles will serve the trolleybus lines being prepared under the city's projects to electrify selected bus routes — which makes the tender less a fleet renewal than a statement of how far the network is meant to grow.

The second attempt

Zdopravy.cz points out that this is the second tender of this size. The first asked for as many as 180 battery trolleybuses and was cancelled for good at the end of last year, when the chairman of the Office for the Protection of Competition (ÚOHS), Petr Mlsna, rejected DPP's appeal. That tender would have scored bids partly on the supplier's experience, a criterion Zdopravy.cz calls unusual for public transport vehicles.

According to the office, EU case law rules that out: experience belongs to a bidder's qualification, while award criteria have to relate to the subject of the contract itself. The complaint came from the Turkish manufacturer Bozankaya, which had been excluded from the competition, leaving Škoda Electric as the only bidder.

In the new tender that criterion is gone. DPP lists five award criteria:

• total price for the whole contract, vehicles and accessories included — 50%;
• length of the warranty on the vehicles, excluding traction batteries — 20%;
• length of the warranty on the traction batteries — 10%;
• a type-approval decision for the standard trolleybus — 10%;
• a type-approval decision for the articulated trolleybus — 10%.

The type approval can come from the Czech authorities or from the national authority of another EU or EEA member state or Switzerland. Zdopravy.cz reads it as the direct replacement for the experience criterion. It is still a 20% advantage for a vehicle that already exists on paper somewhere — but it is tied to the product, not to the bidder's history, which is the distinction ÚOHS drew.

What DPP is asking for

Both types must reach a design speed of at least 70 km/h whether running from the overhead wire or from the batteries, and must recover braking energy. The guaranteed battery range is at least 20 kilometres — with heating or air conditioning running, at full load, in any season, stopping at every stop and reaching the maximum permitted speed, for the whole life of the batteries.

DPP wants a battery warranty of at least 84 months or 420,000 km, whichever comes first, and a vehicle warranty of at least 60 months with a declared service life of 15 years. The vehicles must be fully air-conditioned, carry a ticketing and information system to PID standards, passenger counters and recording cameras; every third one must have equipment for spraying the overhead wires against ice. The contract also covers up to 140 replacement traction batteries, 35 diagnostic kits, six portable chargers, servicing and support for the energy-management and passenger-information systems.

Orders will come in batches of one to 20 vehicles, with delivery within 12 months for standard trolleybuses and 14 months for articulated ones.

The forty from Turkey

DPP currently has only one trolleybus framework contract, and it is with Bozankaya — the firm whose complaint killed the first tender. It covers up to 70 standard vehicles; DPP says it has drawn 30 of them and will use the remaining 40 for lines 191 and 201.

At present we have a framework contract for standard trolleybuses only. Of the maximum volume of 70 vehicles we have drawn 30; we will use the remaining 40 for lines 191 and 201. For further electrification projects we need new vehicles, articulated trolleybuses for example for lines 150, 158 or 184. We are building on our experience so far, which is why we need the framework contract signed well in advance, so that we can start running the new trolleybus lines at the same time as the construction of the power and charging infrastructure is completed.

— Jan Šurovský, vice-chair of the board and technical director – Surface, DPP

Zdopravy.cz adds that of the 30 ordered, 28 have so far been transferred into DPP's ownership. The procedure has been slow enough to make the case for ordering early: DPP's own explanation for tendering now is that it wants vehicles on hand when the wires and chargers are finished, not months afterwards.

Where they would run

DPP names lines 150, 158 and 184 as examples. Zdopravy.cz, citing earlier information, places the articulated vehicles in the south-west of the city on lines 142 (Velká Ohrada – Nové Butovice), 184 (Kukulova – Velká Ohrada) and 225 (Velká Ohrada – Sídliště Na Dědině), and in the south on line 150 (Želivského – Na Beránku). In the north-east it expects reinforcement of line 58 and the electrification of line 136.

Zdopravy.cz has also corrected its own list: lines 124 and 139 are no longer being prepared for articulated trolleybuses. The 124 is to be replaced by the planned tram line in Jeremenkova street and the 139 by the new tram line to Komořany — a reminder that the electrification programme is being redrawn as it goes, and that a framework contract "for up to" 140 vehicles commits DPP to nothing beyond what it chooses to order.