Spain's Adif Awards €28.6M C-5 Madrid Signaling Contract, With Technical Score Beating the Cheapest Bid
A Hitachi Rail–Grupo CPS consortium won the commuter line LZB signaling renewal at €28.6M, edging out Siemens' cheaper bid — part of a €1.35 billion corridor modernization.
Spanish rail infrastructure manager Adif has awarded the renewal of the LZB signaling system on Madrid's C-5 Cercanías corridor (Atocha–Móstoles-El Soto) to a consortium of Hitachi Rail GTS Spain and Sistemas y Montajes Industriales (Grupo CPS) for €28.6 million — a 10.8 percent discount on the €32.06 million budget, with a 16-month execution period and a perfect technical score of 49/49.
Notably, the cheapest bid lost: Siemens Rail Automation with FCC offered €28.37 million but scored 44.08 on technical criteria. Enyse (€28.95 million) and CAF (€29.97 million) also participated. The winner will prepare the corridor's migration toward ERTMS Level 2, and a follow-on contract for Atocha–Humanes worth around €70 million is still pending.
The contract sits within a €1.35 billion integral modernization plan for the C-5 — roughly €650 million for infrastructure and €700 million for rolling stock and depots — drawn up after the Urda accident, a further instance of the now-familiar pattern in which a serious incident converts into a large-scale safety investment program on dense commuter corridors.