JOIN USWATCH : More metro trains to have six coaches by March
Journey by Namma Metro will get comfy from March onwards, as 25 of the 50 trains will have six coaches, allowing passengers some breathing space during peak hour journeys.
The announcement was made by officials after Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy flagged off the third six-car train at Vidhana Soudha Metro Station on Thursday. Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) Managing Director Ajay Seth said the six-car trains will help them deal with the peak hour rush.
While a three-car train can accommodate 950 passengers, its six-car counterpart can carry 1850 people. BMRCL is in the process of adding three intermediate cars to the existing three-car trains to enhance their capacity.
Seth said two more six-car trains will be introduced next month and one of them will be deployed on the Green Line (Nagasandra-Yelachenahalli) for the first time. “The peak hour traffic on Green Line is 10000 passenger compared to 19000 passengers on the Purple Line (Byappanahalli-Mysore Road). However, considering the commuters’ demand, we will introduce it by the end of December,” he said.
All trains to have 6-cars by end of 2019
The BMRCL official said Bharat Earth Movers Limited (BEML) is likely to supply all the intermediate coaches by August. “By March we will have 25 six-car trains. All the 50 trains will have six cars by the end of next year,” he said.
Asked whether six cars would be enough to handle the traffic in future, Seth said the coupling of cars was based on a technical design which limits Namma Metro to a six-car model. “Instead of increasing train capacity, we are grappling with the idea of increasing the frequency to 2 minutes,” he said.
The daily ridership of Namma Metro has been climbing steadily with the introduction of big trains. While the average ridership has neared 4 lakh per day, last month’s festive rush saw the number reaching 4.49 lakh on October 17.
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