CAF USA Selected As Preferred Vendor For Streetcar Vehicles

The City of Cincinnati has selected CAF USA as the preferred vendor to provide up to five modern streetcar vehicles to the first phase of the Cincinnati Streetcar. The City will now enter into contract negotiations with CAF USA, the next step toward a formal contract award and Notice to Proceed. The City will also begin the federally-required Pre-Award audit of CAF USA for compliance with federal Buy America regulations.

• Download: Streetcar Vehicle Renderings

CAF USA is a subsidiary of CAF (Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles, S.A.) an international market leader in the design, manufacture, maintenance, and supply of equipment and components for railway systems. CAF has extensive experience producing vehicles for high speed rail, commuter rail, light rail, and streetcar applications worldwide. It has produced light rail vehicles for Pittsburgh, Sacramento, and Houston (In Production) and streetcar vehicles for the international market such as Besancon (France), Nantes (France), Belgrade (Serbia), Antalya (Turkey), Stockholm (Sweden), Edinburgh (Scotland), Zaragoza (Spain), Granada (Spain), Sevilla (Spain), Bilbao (Spain), and Vitoria (Spain).

The vehicles produced by CAF USA for the Cincinnati Streetcar must comply with the federal Buy America program, which requires the vehicles be produced with at least 60% domestic content and that final assembly of the vehicles take place in the United States. The Cincinnati vehicles will be assembled at CAF USA's facility in Elmira, NY.

CAF USA was selected through an extensive, federally compliant procurement process that began with the issuance of a Request for Proposals (RFP) in September 2011. Five vendors submitted proposals by the due date.

The vehicle offered by CAF USA is a conventionally-powered vehicle with a 100% low-floor design. While the City's RFP process included the ability for vendors to propose conventionally powered "on-wire" vehicles as well as "off-wire" technology, the "off-wire" technology was higher priced and determined to have limited applicability, given the topography of Cincinnati's first streetcar route.