Sunita Somvanshi
Transdev, in partnership with the Australian group John Holland, has won the contract to operate the Melbourne tramway (Australia) valued at 4.2 billion euros for a duration of nine years, announced the French public transport operator on Thursday. Yarra Trams, a vast network of 24 lines over more than 250 km of tracks, had been operated since 2009 by the other major French urban transport group and competitor Keolis (70% owned by the SNCF) with the local company Downer EDI.
“The Department of Transport and Planning of the State of Victoria (Australia) has awarded to the joint venture between Transdev (51%) and John Holland (49%) the contract to operate and maintain Yarra Trams, Melbourne’s tramway network, for an initial term of nine years. The contract, which will be taken over by the joint venture in December 2024, is valued at EUR 4.2 billion euros (or AUD 6.8 billion),” the operator said in a statement.
“Melburnians deserve a world-class tram network – and we’re proud to be bringing our industry-leading expertise to deliver the best possible passenger experience for this growing city,” said Steve Butcher, John Holland’s Executive General Manager – Rail and Transport.
Yarra Trams presents itself as one of the oldest and largest tram networks in the world. It has 600 stops in the capital of the State of Victoria and transports more than 147 million passengers each year. Starting in 2025, a hundred new-generation trams with a capacity of 150 passengers per carriage will reinforce the existing fleet, the group specified.
This contract marks “the strengthening of our activities in Australia, where we already operate a large number of modes of transport: tramway, bus, coach and ferries,” said Thierry Mallet, Chairman and CEO of Transdev, quoted in the statement. Transdev and John Holland also operate Region 9 (South and East) buses in Sydney through their joint venture Yarra Journey Makers (YJM). The French operator, co-owned 66% by Caisse des Dépôts and 34% by the German group Rethmann, transports on average 12 million passengers daily in France and worldwide. In 2023, it achieved a turnover of 9.33 billion euros.
Similar Posts
“Choosing YJM to run Yarra Trams is a tremendous honour and privilege because the responsibility and opportunities are immense,” said Brian Brennan, CEO Transdev Australia and New Zealand.
At the end of June, Transdev signed another major contract: a concession for buses and trams in downtown Utrecht, Netherlands, worth nearly 1.7 billion euros over ten years. The French group will thus operate 50 bus lines and three tram lines in the fourth-largest city in the Netherlands. Transdev plans to invest 350 million euros to renew the bus fleet, which is to be fully electrified by 2028. The contract will be effective from December 2025 for a duration of ten years.
Worldwide, Transdev manages 32 rail contracts, operating more than 800 trains and transporting more than 205 million passengers annually on regional and suburban lines, the company explained last September. In the same month, Transdev obtained the renewal of its contract in New Zealand until 2031 for the operation of five regional rail lines around Wellington, which it has managed since 2016 with the industrial company Hyundai Rotem.
In its home country, the operator is also in demand, especially with the upcoming Olympic Games. During a meeting of the Ile-de-France Mobilités (IDFM) commission on June 15 to select candidates, the regional transport authority chose to award Transdev the contract worth 21.7 million euros to transport the 100,000 accredited visitors, including 20,000 journalists from around the world, the daily details. IDFM will provide buses and coaches—electric and biogas—from its fleet in the Île-de-France region but struggled to find operators to run them during the Olympics. Its initial call for tenders attracted no candidates due to the heavy penalties announced in case of malfunctions, revealed Le Canard enchaîné in early January. Consequently, IDFM relaunched another call for tenders on December 21, with significantly reduced penalties.
