Mayor Santiago Guarderas stressed that the Metro will start operations at the end of 2022
This Thursday morning, January 13, the mayor Santiago Guarderas received the report with the parameters for the operation and maintenance of the Quito Metro. This document contains the requirements that must be met by the company contracted to operate the project.
The call was at La Magdalena station, from there the media and authorities traveled on one of the trains to the San Francisco station, located in the center of the city. Together with Mauricio Rodas and Jorge Yunda, Guarderas is the third mayor who has made a tour of expectation on subway trains.
The mayor assured, once again, that the Start of commercial operations will be the last quarter of 2022. He also stated that the management model will be under the figure of contracting for services, the same ones that will be awarded to a International company.
José Carles Terés, representative of the technical structurer commanded by Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya, reported that this document contains the characteristics for the operation of the Metro.
The international operator must fulfill four tasks fundamental: to have the capacity to meet the demand from the city; must be able to perform operation of trains and stations; shall issue enough indicators so that different levels of quality can be evaluated and achieved; and finally, you should be able to comply with the different associated contracts to the operation, such as the cleanliness and safety of stations and trains.
The complementary contracts that will have to do with the maintenance of the Metro will be the maintenance of the rolling stock, railway signalling, systems and communications, and track, civil works, catenary and substations.
In addition, Terés pointed out that the company Metro de Quito will be the quality manager to which the operator must inform all the news and deliver the quality indicators. For this, the Metro must have the assistance of an external supervisor, who is an expert in railway operations, the same as will transfer the knowledge to the technicians of the country who will be the ones in charge in the future.
The mayor announced that will hire a team with 18 experts in electromechanics, the same ones that will be Ecuadorians and will come out of an agreement with the universities. They will receive a training from the company Ferrocarils de la Generalitat de Catalunya and must be certified by the operator to be awarded.
This team will have head of supervision, six engineers associated with maintenance, four with operations and stations, two with security and quality control, four with warranty control (during the two-year process) and two with the control of additional services such as cleaning, security and other collateral contracts to the service.
The necessary indicators with which the operator will be measured, according to Terés, will be:
- Quality indicators: Punctuality, regularity, customer service.
- Production indicators: Scheduled service versus executed service.
- Safety indicators: Number of reported incidents.
Efrain Bastidas, manager of the Quito Metro, emphasized that the technical operating parameters, delivered this morning they had not been carried out since the beginning of the construction of the work. “We have a clear roadmap, we know how we are going to control those contracts years later to ask for quality control,” he added.
In addition, it announced that in the following weeks the structuring company will deliver the terms of reference (TDR) for initiate the contracting of the international operator.
The authorities indicated that the other subsystems of the project have a high level of progress. According to statements by Santiago Guarderas, they are already in hiring process of validators, these will allow payment through a proximity card. the same mechanism It will be implemented at the entrance to the Trolebús and Ecovía.
They also stressed that They already installed the folding doors that will complete the collection system. However, this had already been announced by previous administrations.
Solanda
Faced with the constant claim of the inhabitants of the Solanda citadel due to the destruction of their homes, the mayor pointed out that they are working on the technical and legal resources to find a possible solution.
He clarified that in June 2019, when the Solanda problem and the report issued by the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador (PUCE) on the possible causes of the damage became known, himself, as deputy mayor, presented a draft resolution to immediately hire a complementary study recommended by the PUCE to determine who was responsible.
This would have been approved by the Council, but “from then until now absolutely nothing was done to hire that studio”Guarderas stressed.
Last week they announced that the results of this study will be known in five or six months and with this they will define those responsible.
Guarderas also accepted that Its responsibility is to ensure the safety of the inhabitants and offered to propose alternatives for help. “This is different from the problem that is going to be studied,” he argued. (I)
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