CAF Urbos 3 streetcar for Kansas City. Simulation: CAF.

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Kansas City — By “piggybacking” its order for streetcar rolling stock on Cincinnati’s order, Kansas City has probably saved at least several million dollars in the cost of its streetcar project.

This past October, Kansas City took advantage of the “piggybacking” opportunity and awarded a $22 million contract to CAF USA, a subsidiary of Spain’s Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles S.A., for five streetcars to provide service over its 2.2-mile downtown streetcar starter line, now under construction. (For background, see Kansas City — Another new downtown streetcar project starts to take shape.)

The Urbos 3 streetcars, costing a relatively bargain price of roughly $4.4 million each, will be assembled at CAF’s plant in Elmira, N.Y. The order follows (and is linked to) CAF USA’s contract with Cincinnati, which also involves five streetcars. (Thanks to Railway Age for details.)

Via a Twitter message link from John Schneider, here’s a look at CAF’s Urbos 3 streetcar running in Spain:

Hopefully, within a few years we’ll see a very similar model running on the streets of Cincinnati and Kansas City.