Kaba installs platform screen doors at Shanghai Railway

(12/12/2005)

Together with a local partner, Kaba has won the international tender issued by Shanghai Railway Traffic Shensong Line Development Co. Ltd., to install latest-generation platform screen doors along a total length of 2.9 kilometers on Shanghai's new Line 9 subway.

Starting in January 2006, Kaba will begin to equip the stations of the new Number 9 subway line with latest-generation platform screen doors. They form a physical barrier between the platforms and the track bed and comply with the most stringent safety requirements. As soon as the train has stopped in the station, its car doors and the congruent platform screen doors open simultaneously to allow unhindered passenger flows.

By the summer of 2008, twenty platforms with a total length of 2.9 kilometers will have been equipped with some 600 auto-matic doors. The project will take three years to complete and for Kaba Gilgen AG involves deliveries and services worth approximately CHF 4.7 million.

All core components of the facility, such as drives and control systems, will be developed and manufactured in Switzerland. Technical planning and installation procedures will be handled in Switzerland as well. However, the glass and metal front elements will be produced directly in Shanghai. A local Kaba Gilgen team is responsible for on-site project management.

In many from-scratch projects, platform screen doors are already the standard. The demand for closed, full-height partitions is particularly brisk in southern or subtropical countries where they help reduce energy consumption in the public transportation sector. Stations equipped with platform screen doors can be more efficiently air-conditioned.

Additionally, the physical barrier between the platform and the rail area enhances the safety of the mass transit sys-tem. As the trains whisk into the stations, waiting passengers are protected against pressure waves, dust, and the potential hazards of exposed track. The deployment of platform screen doors allows trains to safely enter stations at higher speeds and shorter intervals. This in-creases the capacity of the transportation system, a welcome gain in convenience for pas-sengers.

To date, the platform screen doors project in Hong Kong remains the first and largest retrofit project of its kind without disrupting ongoing subway service. In addition to other ongoing projects in Taiwan and Hong Kong, a CHF 2.2 million pilot project involving half-height plat-form screen doors will be launched in Taipei starting in 2006.

"The decisive factors for the customer's choice was not just our experience in the domain of platform screen doors – based on more than 40 years of suc-cessful development work in the automatic door segment –, but also the excellent references we earned in New York, Toulouse, and Hong Kong. Especially in technically sensitive facilities involving mass transit systems, product reliability is absolutely paramount." said Jakob Gilgen, Kaba Door Systems' COO.

Related topics:  Access Control   Fire, Health & Safety   Physical Security 

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