: Every two days, 200-odd employees at Alstom Transport-India’s metro-coach manufacturing unit at Sri City in Andhra Pradesh churn out a metro-rail coach for Indian cities.
Kochi Metro will get 75 of these stainless steel-bodied coaches, beginning this December. This will be one of the faster metro-coach deliveries, as it comes just 15 months after placing the order.
“At Rs. 8.40 crore a coach, it is the most cost-effective coach ever built in India,” said Elias George, MD of Kochi Metro Rail Limited (KMRL). He was speaking to mediapersons at the unveiling of Kochi Metro’s first car-body shell at the metro-coach manufacturing unit in Sri City SEZ in Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh on Saturday.
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The 22,208-sq.m unit can presently roll out a total of 250 metro coaches per year. The firm also has a 1.20-km-long testing track where safety and other features of coaches are put to test.
The under-frame and body works are done at the body-shell area, while cabling, driver cabin, seats and bogeys are attached in the assembly shop, which is frequently inspected by customer metro agencies.
Acoustics, too, is looked into, to reduce noise in the coach interiors. Kochi Metro has placed order for trains managed using communication-based train control and hence are also operable sans loco pilots.
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“We adhere to all standard safety features, while fire-safety norms conform to European Union (EU) standards,” the firm’s officials said. Elaborating on French funding and technological aspects for Kochi Metro, Mr George spoke of how a French flavour pervades all through the project, from Rs 1,500 crore AFD-funding to coaches, power, signalling and telecommunication by Alstom. “The coaches will be disabled-friendly and net-enabled for commuters to make best use of their commuting time. Thus, commuting will be educative, while also enabling people to order goods online. No wonder that the metro has captured the imagination of Keralites worldwide,” he said.
The coaches for Kochi Metro are the first to be fully engineered and manufactured in India, said President of Alstom Transport Henri Poupart-Lafarge. Each 65-metre-long rake comprising three coaches can carry a ‘crush load’ (maximum load) of 975 passengers—136 sitting and 839 standing.
Coaches will be linked with vestibules. Each air-conditioned coach will have eight wide auto-close doors, to enable easy and fast boarding and alighting. As in other metros, passengers will face each other, with seats along the windows.