Mumbai Metro Line 3’s Trial Runs Extended to Dadar Station

Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation (MMRC) this Tuesday extended trial runs (train testing) on Mumbai Metro’s 33.5 km Line-3 (Aqua Line) from Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) up to Dadar Station.

MMRC and Alstom Transport’s teams manually operated one of their 8 coach Alstom Metropolis trains at a low-speed of 10 kmph on the up-line tracks up to Dadar Station through Dharavi and Shitladevi stations, a distance of roughly 4.3 km from BKC Station.

This is the first time a metro train has entered South Mumbai (also known as South Bombay or Island City). I shared a video with a front-on view from the train’s cabin on my Patreon page earlier in the week.

As always, the sole objective of the first run was to check for Schedule of Dimensions (SOD) clearances and observe the train’s interaction with the civil structure to ensure there are no physical obstructions along the way.

The section’s twin tunnels were built by J Kumar Infraprojects – China Railway Tunnel Group JV (4.94 km Package UGC-05: CSIA to Dharavi) and by Continental Engineering Corp – ITD Cementation – Tata Projects JV (6.08 km Package UGC-04: Dharavi to Worli).

Final tunnel breakthroughs for both packages were recorded all the way back in 2020 by TBM S-1073 (Krishna-1) on UGC-04 and TBM S64 (Godavari-4) on UGC-05.

To facilitate this low-speed run, Alstom Transport which is coincidentally the traction contractor (Package 11A) on May 3 energized the line’s 25 kV overhead electrification (OHE) system within the up-line tunnel. Here’s a notification published in the newspapers by MMRC:

Some snaps from the trial run shared by a follower:

After the final tunnel breakthrough, operators elsewhere in India have taken no more than 2 years to finish system installation, station architectural finishing & testing to operationalize their metro lines, so clearly Line-3 is running terribly behind schedule.

While the drama surrounding Aarey Depot & its Operational Control Centre‘s construction was legit and affected the start of integrated trial runs, it never was the long pole on the critical path of commissioning. System installation and station architectural finishing (see pics) works were.

Anyhow, Line-3’s opening has been divided into 3 phases. Train testing on Phase 1 (Aarey Colony – BKC) with 10 stations started in August 2022. Proper integrated testing finally started in March 2024 with all systems (eg. signaling, telecommunications, track) currently certified by Bureau Veritas – MMRC’s Independent Safety Assessor (ISA).

Phase 2 (BKC – Acharya Atre Chowk) with 6 underground stations will be the next to open, which I envision will happen no more than 6 months from the opening of Phase 1. Back in December 2022, I was looking at a Q3 2024 (July – September) opening looking at all the post-tunneling activities pending and still stand by that timeframe.

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– TMRG