A consortium consisting of SYSTRA, ARCADIS and ILEX has been appointed by the owners, SYTRAL, the Joint Public Transport Authority for the Rhone and Greater Lyon, to build an extension to the T2 tramway line. Once completed, the line will extend as far as Eurexpo, the Lyon exhibition centre.

SYSTRA is heading the consortium in partnership with ARCADIS, who are responsible for roads and services infrastructure, and ILEX, the architects and landscaping consultants. The group has already successfully managed the project for phase 1 of the T4 tramway line, which came into service on 20 April this year, and they recently won a bid to manage the project for phase 2, which will extend the line via Part Dieu station to Feyssine University in Villeurbanne.

Today, the East Lyon area is a major focus for the development of Greater Lyon with landmark projects for the city and business community due for completion over the next few years. Lyon’s Exhibition Centre, Eurexpo, is located right in the middle of the eastern plateau. Every year the Centre hosts between 40 and 50 trade fairs and public exhibitions as well as around 60 private events. It already attracts over a million visitors a year and this figure is likely to double by 2015, with around 17,000 visitors a day during opening times.

Public transport access to Eurexpo and the eastern centre of the city is currently by bus. SYTRAL and the Greater Lyon Authority were keen to improve transport connections from the city centre by extending the T2 tramway with 3,800 metres of new dual-track infrastructure on its own separate site and with four stations at 950-metre intervals. Works are due to begin at the start of 2011.

The extension will help to enhance the profile of Eurexpo and provide additional capacity to cater for the high volumes of passenger traffic that it generates. Journey times from the south-east of Lyon to the exhibition centre will be greatly reduced.

To ensure the successful completion of the project, and meet the date set for the launch of the service in November 2012 when Eurexpo plays host to the Pollutec exhibition, SYSTRA plans to increase staff at its Regional Headquarters in Lyon where it already has a large team of engineers and technical support.