Hyderabad Metro Rail, the Government Special Purpose Vehicle overlooking the city’s metro rail operations, and L&T Metro Rail Hyderabad (L&TMRH), the concessionnaire which has built the project and is running the commercial operations, have decided to lease four metro train rakes of three coaches each to augment the existing fleet to deal with the heavy rush during the morning and evening peak hours in the twin cities.
The four metro trains are to be sourced from Nagpur Metro as the rail systems operating in the Maharashtra city are similar to the ones being run here. The metro coaches have been manufactured by South Korea’s Hyundai, officials said on Friday.
The metro rail authorities concerned have already begun talks with Nagpur Metro and have obtained their consent to take the four spare trains on lease. But before they arrive here, the consent of the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Development has to be obtained. The trains may also have to undergo safety runs supervised by the Commissioner of Metro Rail Safety (CMRS) before being deployed into service.
Incidentally, Nagpur Metro had sourced two trains from L&TMRH when the latter was still constructing the project in different sections and it had a few trains to spare for about ₹14 crore a year. Later, they were returned when Nagpur Metro got its own coaches. The lease amount could be on the same lines, said officials, requesting anonymity.
Municipal Administration and Urban Development (MA&UD) Minister K.T. Rama Rao had earlier advised HMR and L&TMRH to take metro trains on lease to tackle the peak hour rush in the mornings and evenings, specially on the Blue Line between Raidurg and Nagole as brand-new trains could take up to one and a half years to arrive.
“We are consistently clocking five lakh passengers a day. The plan is increase the availability of services on the Blue Line every three minutes or even two minutes by which we expect to handle the crowd better during the peak hours,” explained officials.
This and the Red Line between LB Nagar and Miyapur are packed to capacity and expectations are that daily occupancy could touch seven lakh within a year with more services and better first- and last-mile connectivity.
For the Hyderabad project, L&TMRH had sourced the Hyundai metro coaches or 57 train sets or 171 coaches a decade ago at ₹1,800 crore (each coach is now estimated to cost ₹13 crore now) a decade ago and the first train set had arrived in May 2014.
Most of these trains are run on the Red and Blue Lines because of the rush, but once the leased rakes are pressed into service, metro rail authorities intend to increase the number of services on the Green Line – MGBS to JBS as well with better frequency.
