KUCHING, April 6 — Two bids have been received for the Kuching Urban Transportation System (KUTS) project’s System Package 1 tender, Sarawak Metro Sdn Bhd (Sarawak Metro) announced.

The tender involves the supply of rolling stock (hydrogen-powered autonomous rail transit —ART — vehicles), depot equipment and the maintenance of vehicles, signalling and control system, and automatic platform gate (APG).

"One of the bids is from a joint venture company comprising CRRC (Hong Kong) Co Ltd, CHEC Construction (M) Sdn Bhd and KACC Construction Sdn Bhd, (while) the other bid is from a joint venture company comprising EPR (Kuching) Sdn Bhd, Global Rail Sdn Bhd and Mobilus Sdn Bhd,” it said in a statement.

As a requirement of the tender exercise, each joint venture has to consist of a local Sarawak partner, where the local Sarawak companies in the joint ventures involved in this tender are KACC Construction Sdn Bhd and EPR (Kuching) Sdn Bhd.

A third joint venture company, which earlier expressed interest to take part in the tender, however, did not submit a bid by the closing date on March 31, 2022.

The contract to the successful bidder is expected to be awarded by the second quarter of this year.

Sarawak Metro, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sarawak Economic Development Corporation (SEDC), advertised in both international and national publications in mid-2021 calling for companies to register as rolling stock vendors.

Sarawak Metro will call for tenders for System Package 2 of the KUTS project (Phase 1) by the second quarter of this year. This package comprises the provision of a communication system (COMMS), automatic fare collection (AFC), information technology system (ITS), supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), a computerised maintenance management system (CMMS) and an operation control centre (OCC).

The development of the KUTS project will be conducted in phases with the first phase involving the development of two lines, namely the Samarahan Line, which covers a distance of about 28km from Rembus to the city centre and the Serian Line (24km) from 12th Mile Kuching-Serian Expressway to the Isthmus.

The passenger service for the ART will be introduced in stages, starting from the fourth quarter of 2025. — Bernama