Could you please tell us about the activities of Systra SA: how was it created, what path of development has it travelled and what sort of achievements does it have today?

SYSTRA celebrated in2007 its 50 years old.
SYSTRA was born out of the merger between two civil engineering subsidiaries, one founded by SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer – French Railways) in 1957 (SOFRERAIL, Société d’études et de réalisations ferroviaires) and the other by RATP (Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens – Paris Transport Authority) in 1961 (SOFRETU, Société d’études et de réalisations de transports urbains).
Both companies had originally been created with the aim of extending the expertise of their parent companies to external customers and providing technical assistance to foreign transport companies who were seeking either to modernize or refurbish existing lines, or to build new lines using the latest technology. They quickly gained international recognition due to their combined skills as designers and operators of transport networks. Today, SYSTRA Group is one of the leading international transport engineering companies. SYSTRA’s activities cover the whole range of expertise in urban and rail transport: high-speed trains, tramways, combined road-rail transport, conventional passenger rail and rail freight, commuter services, regional fast rail networks, metros, bus rapid transit, automatic driverless systems, guided bus systems.
SYSTRA is unique in that it specializes entirely in urban and rail transport. It possesses customers in over 350 cities and 150 countries, across all continents. There is more than 2500 staff around the world in design offices or on site who study, build, take delivery and test tunnels, bridges, track and equipment. The most famous achievement of SYSTRA is Dubai metro, a full automated metro system on a specific viaduct inaugurated in September 2009.
SYSTRA owes its strength and originality to its three founding cultures and draws on the expertise of its leading shareholders: SNCF employees, RATP employees and executives from the private sector work together in France and around the world. For each large project a national branch is created, and in 2010 was opened SYSTRA branch in Azerbaijan, which is recruiting Azerbaijani engineers for our projects in the country, working side by side together with international experts.

We know that your company is interested in the Azerbaijani market. What is the reason for this interest?

The strong involvement of your President and your government in the renovation and modernization of Baku city was very appealing for us and we were honored to be chosen, after an international tender, to propose our vision of Baku city public transport network. . It was an attractive assignment to study the transport needs among the population, propose new schemes for the future network and then support Baku Metropolitan in the development of such plans.
At the beginning of our assignment we immediately felt that we were living some particular moments in time were everything was possible in terms of urban development and that the citizen life would be changed after the completion of our project. This is a rare opportunity in our engineer’s career.

With the advent of the 21st century, Azerbaijan built two major infrastructure projects towards the West: the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline. In the second decade of the century, Azerbaijan is going to implement another major project which will deliver “big” Caspian gas to Europe. Apart from that, Azerbaijan has very ambitious plans in the field of developing the whole transport infrastructure in the country. Can we say that you are in the right place at the right time?

Yes, we are probably settling in Azerbaijan at the exact time when the country is developing a full range of large infrastructure networks in several domains such energy, transport, communication. Your country intends to be better connected to the rest of the world and develop its exporting capabilities. There are ambitious projects to increase oil transport capacities to the West, not only by Pipeline but by the improvement of rail transport as well. Some of our experts were already involved in this project and furthermore we were chosen two years ago by the Georgian railways to make the design of the rail modernization for the section from Tbilisi to Black sea, a section where Azerbaijan oil is also transiting.  All these networks should be considered as the backbone of the future development of the Azerbaijan economy.

Systra is a company that has built one in three metro stations in the world. Are you going to leave your “mark” in Baku? After all, the government of Azerbaijan has ambitious plans to increase the number of Baku metro stations from the current 23 to 50.

The architects in charge of station design will for sure leave their “signing” for centuries in Baku city. For these reason, each station design is subject to discussions between Baku Metropolitan, their engineers and the government representatives to implement the best ideas, which have to be innovative, users friendly and in accordance with the city environment. SYSTRA architects are not working alone on these subjects and is often associated with Azerbaijani architects in order to propose solutions in the continuity of the architectural sensitivity of the country.

Your company has the technology to manage metro trains in a fully automatic mode, that’s to say without drivers. Can you give our readers more details about it?

Several metro systems operate nowadays with driverless trains, with the aim of reducing the operational costs and improving the frequency of service.
It exists several degrees in automation.  Although the operation of the Metro system can be centrally controlled from the Operation Control Center, drivers or specialized agents may be still present in the front coaches, in order to operates doors and react to emergency situation.  Systems without human presence onboard suppose a higher degree in terms of monitoring of all current and unexpected events but they propose the maximum of flexibility and are nowadays fully reliable.

As a whole, such systems are user friendly, because they enable to operate more trains (and as a consequence, more space is available for each passenger) and use advanced system of detection for preventing all incidents of technical or human nature.
In 1983 SYSTRA had been associated to the first urban system in the world to run in fully automatic mode.
the VAL (light automatic vehicle) in Lille. Twenty five years on, SYSTRA has accumulated vast experience
in the field of automatic urban transportation systems. This know- how is today fully at the disposal of our client Baku Metropolitan company.

Azerbaijan has approved a state programme for the development of the railway transport system in Azerbaijan in 2010-2014. A year after the opening of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway and the railway tunnel under the Bosporus, passengers will get a chance to get from the Caspian coast to any point in Europe. In order to attain European standards, the Azerbaijani railway will need to buy highly comfortable carriages and locomotives to increase the volume of passenger and cargo traffic. Does Systra have a strategy for cooperation with the Azerbaijani government in this field?

SYSTRA proposed its services for the assistance of Ministry of Transport of Azerbaijan for several project aiming at a strong improvement of rail passenger services. Fast and reliable intercity rail transport can be developed in Azerbaijan and will be a key for the regional development of all cities of the countries. These projects are under examination and we hope that we will have, in near future, some positive achievement together with your national railways.