OREANDA-NEWS. Kirovsky Zavod hosted an off-site meeting of the St. Petersburg Administration working group, which was devoted to questions of renewing the city's passenger transport system.

During the off-site session, Kirovsky Zavod was visited by the St. Petersburg Transport Committee Directorate, the Committee on Industrial Policy and Innovations, as well as representatives of the Metro and companies operating passenger transport in the city. The Director General of the Kirov Group, Georgy Semenenko took the delegation on a tour. The guests inspected the workshop of the joint venture of Kirovsky Zavod and the Czech Skoda Transportation under which innovative NeVa trains are being manufactured. The meeting's participants found out about the advantages of the Russian-Czech enterprise, the localization speed of high-tech wagon production, and the promising directions of partners' activity.

At the end of the tour the participants discussed the St. Petersburg transportation system's development. Heads of the administration reviewed Kirovsky Zavod's suggestions on supplying the city with models of modern passenger auto and electric transport. They found out the details of the plant's joint projects with Skoda Transportation and Kryukovsky Railway Car Building Works for the production of trams, metro wagons, and higher-speed electric trains. The meetings' participants also found out about the possibilities of supplying various types of European-level busses to St. Petersburg by Goppel Bus GmbH, a German subsidiary of the Kirov Group, and by the Austrian Kutsenits.

Members of the working group supported Kirovsky Zavod's plans to transfer a low-floor tram, produced jointly with Skoda Transportation, and several large Goppel and small Kutsenits busses, including those running on gas engine fuel, to the city's companies for operational testing late this year or early next year.

At the end of the meeting, a decision was also made to create expert scientific and technical groups with the participation of reputable specialists in auto and electric transport. These groups, which will be created to enhance the quality of collaboration between the producers and customers of modern equipment, will elaborate questions related to renewing the rolling stock of St. Petersburg's passenger transport system.

It is notable that Kirovsky Zavod takes an active part in the activity of the working group for the development of industrial facilities' production capacities to produce the rolling stock of St. Petersburg's passenger transport system. The company is carrying out this work under the Memorandum of Understanding signed between St. Petersburg and JSC Kirovsky Zavod in the realm of modernizing and renewing the rolling stock of ground passenger transport and metro in the city of St. Petersburg.