Delhi metro orders more coaches

NEW DELHI - With the metro increasingly becoming the choice of city’s commuters, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has ordered extra coaches to be attached to some existing trains to increase the passenger capacity, an official said Sunday.

Eight more coaches have been ordered by the DMRC to be added to four trains.

‘They (trains) are running fully packed as over 850,000 passengers travel a day. To handle the rush, the new coaches will be added to four of the existing trains to make them into six-car trains,’ DMRC spokesman Anuj Dayal said.

The metro plies 70 trains having four coaches each at present. Each additional coach can carry a maximum of 390 people - 50 sitting and 340 standing.

The coaches are being manufactured by Bharat Earth Movers Limited (BEML) at their Bangalore factory. This is the first time an Indian company is independently making a metro coach, the official added.

‘The first two coaches will be delivered by August 2009. With these eight coaches, it will be the first time that any Indian manufacturer will be making modern metro rail coaches entirely on their own without any collaboration with a foreign company,’ Dayal said.

The DMRC can increase train lengths to eight coaches as a majority of the platforms are built for an eight-coach capacity.