Labor has promised to buy 30 new Metro trains and 20 V/Line carriages if it wins power.
The order for new trains will go to the manufacturer that employs the highest number of Victorians in building them, the Opposition says.
The trains would cost $800 million to $900 million and would be at least 50 per cent Victorian-made, almost double the 30 per cent local content that is currently mandated for trains and trams.
The promise comes as the Napthine government prepares to put into service on Wednesday the first new V/Line VLocity train it ordered.
The train, built by Bombardier in Dandenong, is scheduled to travel to Bacchus Marsh on its first passenger run at 2.48pm. It is part of an order of 43 new carriages made by the Napthine government in 2012.
Labor’s trains promise is an attempt to win votes in the key battlegrounds of public transport and jobs. It says it will give favouritism to manufacturers Alstom, Bombardier and UGL, who employ a combined 600 staff in Victoria, and has told each to begin preparing bids.
The Napthine government has ordered 15 new Metro trains from Alstom since it took office. But the French company, which has a plant in Ballarat, was recently cut from the shortlist of a new order of 25 trains in favour of two bidders from China and Korea and will run out of work in the middle of next year.
The government says the two overseas bidders would still have to meet the 30 per cent local content law in building the “next-generation” trains.
Labor said it would commit $350 million in its first budget for the order of new trains, with $310 million going towards the new Metro trains.
Opposition leader Daniel Andrews made the promise at Alstom’s Ballarat plant.
“Labor will build more trains and create more jobs, helping to fix our unemployment crisis and fix our public transport system,” he said.
“The industry has been crying out for a long-term rolling stock strategy to give the industry scale and certainty, and that’s what Labor will deliver.”
This story first appeared in The Age
