MEGA Invites Tenders to Procure 96 Coaches for Ahmedabad Metro

Thanks to Shashwat Pant for bringing this to my attention!

The Metro-Link Express for Gandhinagar & Ahmedabad (MEGA) on January 15 published a notice on their website inviting tenders from rolling stock manufacturing companies to supply 96 standard gauge metro coaches! This notice to kick-start the bidding process was posted just a couple days after MEGA received the first tranche of Rs 4456 crore of the Rs 5968 crore loan that the Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA) agreed to provide in November 2015.

Invitation for Bids for Design, Manufacture, Supply, Installation, Testing, and Commissioning of 96 Nos. Of Standard Gauge Cars and Training of Personnel – view notice (PDF)

The notice does not divulge any technical details (since it’s essentially just a notice), but can be found in the bidding documents which cost Rs 50,000 that I don’t intend to buy. Instead, referring to the new Detailed Project Report on MEGA’s website that was approved in March 2015, the trains will be 2.90 meters wide (similar to the Kochi Metro) and will initially run in a 3 coach configuration that can later be extended to 6 coaches if & when required. The 3-coach trains are expected to have a capacity of 450 passengers under normal conditions and 764 under crush conditions.

Taking that into consideration, MEGA will initially operate 32 train-sets of 3 coaches each.

Map of Ahmedabad’s Metro – view Ahmedabad Metro information

The bidding process will consist of a single stage through which the applicants will have to submit both their technical & financial bids in one go. The time-frame to conduct a single stage bid is much shorter than the double stage bid which the MMRC in Mumbai is conducting for the 33.5 km Colaba-SEEPZ line. In that long-drawn-out process, first the technical bids will be scrutinized and then eligible applicants who made the cut will be invited to submit their financial bid.

Applications by Rolling Stock companies have to be submitted by 3 pm on 18th April 2016 after which the winning company will be selected at 3:30 pm on the same day. A metro coach can cost anywhere from Rs. 8 crores to Rs. 12 crores, so I expect the Rolling Stock contract’s value to be somewhere in the range of Rs 850 crores to Rs 1050 crores.

For more updates on Ahmedabad’s Metro, check out the Ahmedabad section of The Metro Rail Guy!

– TMRG