In a move that will bring major relief to commuters, the Delhi Metro on Friday started the process of adding 258 more coaches to its fleet.
The 258 new coaches, which will be gradually added to the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation’s (DMRC) fleet by the end of next year, will help the corporation augment its carrying capacity on the Blue, Yellow and Red lines of the network.
“In order to substantially increase the carrying capacity of the three main corridors of Delhi Metro, orders have been placed for the procurement of 258 additional coaches with 162 of these coaches being provided by Bombardier, and 96 coaches by Bharat Earth Movers Limited (BEML),” a DMRC spokesperson said.
The first two coaches of the order to Bombardier were pressed into service on Friday with the conversion of one more six coach train into eight coach configuration on the Blue Line.
The other supplier, BEML will also commence supplying its coaches by the end of the year or early next year, the spokesperson said.
The new eight-coach train was inducted from the Yamuna Bank depot in the presence of DMRC’s Managing Director Dr. Mangu Singh and other senior officials.
New trains
Among the 258 coaches, 14 new eight-coach trains will be added on the Yellow Line (Jahangirpuri-HUDA City Centre) and three new eight-coach trains on the Blue Line (Dwarka-Noida/Vaishali).
Eight-coach trains
The DMRC will use 10 coaches to convert six-coach trains into eight coaches on the Yellow Line, 74 coaches to convert six-coach trains into eight-coaches on the Blue Line and 38 coaches to convert four-coach trains into six coaches on the Red Line (Dilshad Garden-Rithala).
At present, the Delhi Metro operates with a fleet of 227 train sets comprising of 128 six coach, 58 eight coach and 41 four coach trains. A total of 71 trains operate on the Blue Line, 60 on the Yellow Line and 29 on the Red Line. These three lines together carry over 20 lakh passengers every day, the spokesperson said.
“A total of 924 coaches have been ordered for the forthcoming phase of the Delhi Metro, including 504 coaches for the new Phase-III corridors,” the spokesperson said. “162 coaches have already been added on the standard gauge green and violet corridors in the last couple of years, which has substantially boosted carrying capacity on these sections, especially the ITO – Faridabad Violet line,” the spokesperson added.
Some six-coach trains will be converted into
eight-coach trains by 2017-end to augment network capacity
