NEW DELHI: As Delhi Metro expands its network, the DMRC is planning to acquire 52 new trains, including for the upcoming Silver Line under Ph-IV, which would be entirely compliant with unattended train operation (UTO), officials said on Monday.
Thirty-nine of trains will be for the existing Pink Line (Majlis Park-Shiv Vihar) and Magenta Line (Botanical Garden-Janakpuri West), and the rest for Silver Line or Line-10 that is being built between Aerocity and Tughlakabad, they said.
“Tenders had been floated much earlier and it is under process. But, tender is yet to be awarded. Also, all these 52 trains (312 coaches in total) to be procured, will be UTO-mode trains,” the senior official said.
India’s first driverless train operation on the Delhi Metro’s Magenta Line (Line 8) was inaugurated on December 28, 2020, by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In another milestone for the DMRC, driverless train operations on 59-km Pink Line (Line 7) was started on November 25 last year. With that, the total stretch of DMRC’s network which is under driverless operations had grown close to 97 km, putting Delhi Metro at the fourth position globally, among such networks, officials had earlier said.
With both the Pink Line (currently 59-km) and Magenta Line (currently 37-km) set to expand, more trains would be needed to maintain the operational frequency. So, new trains are in the process of being acquired. “Also, in Ph-IV brand new corridors will also be built, which would all be compliant with driverless train operations,” the official said.
Pink Line to be longest corridor of DMRC
Extension plan: The line will be extended from Majlis Park to Maujpur in Phase-IV, making it the longest single metro corridor in India at around 70 km. Once fully functional, the line will become the only Ring Corridor of a Metro system in the country.
The work on Ph-IV had begun in December 2019 with a groundbreaking ceremony but it was hit after the outbreak of Covid in March 2020
According to the government, the Mukundpur-Maujpur, RK Ashram-Janakpuri West, and Aerocity-Tughlakabad corridors were approved by the Cabinet
Approved segment of Phase-IV
61.679-km of new metro lines shall be constructed across three different corridors comprising 45 metro stations. These new sections shall provide interconnectivity among the already operational lines of the Delhi Metro