Trams in Luxembourg

Luxembourg is in the process of reintroducing trams to its transport infrastructure. Construction work begun on a new tram depot on the edge of the Grünewald Forest and the Kirchberg quarter of Luxembourg City in January 2015,[1] with the first tracks of the T1 tramline being laid in July 2016.[2] The tramline, when fully operational, will have 24 stations connected by 16 km of tracks and have a capacity of 10,000 passengers per hour in each direction.[3] Trams provided by the Spanish company CAF[4] began trials on the first phase of the route in July 2017.

The first phase of the new route opened in two stages, with it provisionally running, from 10 December 2017, from the depot, along the Avenue John F. Kennedy, past the European district, the location of many EU institutions, before terminating at the Grand Duchess Charlotte Bridge. Here, a new funicular railway was opened on the same date allowing passengers to descend to Pfaffenthal-Kirchberg railway station for access to national and international heavy rail services running through the Pfaffenthal valley.[5][6][7] The second stage of the first phase opened on 27 July 2018, and extended tram services across the Grand Duchess Charlotte Bridge to Place de l'Étoile in the Limpertsberg quarter.[8][9]

In operation as of 13 December 2020, the second phase sees trams extend into the historical Ville Haute quarter, across the Adolphe Bridge, along Avenue de la Liberté, before terminating at Luxembourg railway station for interchanges between national and international heavy rail services.[10] Work to widen and re-enforce the Adolphe Bridge, first opened in 1903, to accommodate the tramway was completed in July 2017, with a new cycle and pedestrian lane suspended beneath the existing bridge.[11]

The third and final phase of the route, will, by 2022, extend eastwards from the tram depot in the Kirchberg district to Senningerberg before terminating at Luxembourg Airport. Concurrently, by 2023, it will extend southwestwards from Luxembourg station, onto Bonnevoie and Howald, before terminating at the new business district in Cloche d'Or, Gasperich, where it will serve Luxembourg's new national stadium.[12][13]

In October 2020, the Minister for Sustainable Development and Infrastructure, François Bausch, presented detailed plans, of an iniative first announced in June 2018, for a future tramline, extending off the T1 line, alongside the A4 motorway to the north of Luxembourg's second most populous city, Esch-sur-Alzette, by 2028, and to the Belval quarter of the city, including the University of Luxembourg Belval campus, by 2035.[14][15][16] Trams would be expected to reach speeds of up to 100 km/h when traveling through rural sections of the route.[14] In conjunction, plans were announced to expand the network, with the creation of additional lines connected to T1 within, and in proximity to, Luxembourg City, serving amongst other areas, the planned Laangfur residential district in Kirchberg, via Boulevard Konrad Adenauer, as well as, via a revamped Place de l'Etoile interchange and Route d'Arlon, Strassen.[14][17][18]

Twenty-one CAF Urbos trams were delivered in 2017,[19] with a further twelve ordered in 2018.[20] They are 45 m (148 ft) long, 2.65 m (8 ft 8 in) wide, 3.6 m (12 ft) high, with 75 seats[19] and able to carry up to 422 passengers at a top speed of 70 km/h (43 mph). To cope with a 3.6 km (2.2 mi) gap in the 750v DC catenary between "Rout Bréck - Pafendall" tram stop in Kirchberg (about 160 m (520 ft) east of Grand Duchess Charlotte Bridge) and the central railway station, the trams use CAF's ACR system.[21]