Israel's metro takes next step toward a driverless future

The country's most expensive and complex infrastructure project in history, the metro project, is moving forward another step. Ahead of the publication of the results of the tender to establish the infrastructure needed for tunnel excavation and station construction, NTA published Sunday morning the prequalification (PQ) process for the "Infra II" tenders. This is the equipment and operations stage, in which companies will be selected to supply the rolling stock, establish communications and signaling systems and actually manage train traffic. The total value of the tenders at this stage alone is estimated at approximately 30 billion shekels. Transportation authorities and the Finance Ministry are describing the current move as a critical complementary step in planning the project. Until now, the process has focused on the "Infra I" tender, which covers the physical infrastructure for excavating the tunnels and building the framework for the 109 underground stations.