Titagarh Awarded Surat Metro’s 72 Coach Rolling Stock Contract
Titagarh Rail Systems Ltd. in a regulatory filing on Tuesday announced it was awarded a Rs. 857 crore contract for supplying 72 coaches (Package RS2) for Surat Metro’s Phase 1 project.
The city’s 40.35 km Phase 1 consists of two lines: Sathana – Dream City (Line-1) and Bhesan – Saroli (Line-2) with a total of 37 stations. Gujarat Metro Rail Corporation (GMRC) intends to service these lines with 24 train-sets with 3 coaches each (DMC+TC+DMC), which to me is awfully low for high frequency operations.
Titagarh plans to start deliveries in 76 weeks (1.45 years from now) and complete the order in 132 weeks thereafter (4 years from now).
GMRC had invited tenders for this crucial system contract in November 2021 funded by Germany’s KfW Development Bank and opened technical bids in March 2022 to reveal Titagarh Rail Systems (erst. Titagarh Wagons) as the only bidder.
This is Titagarh’s 2nd major order in India after Pune Metro’s 102 coach rolling stock contract signed in August 2019. Titagarh is also manufacturing 204 coaches through a tie-up with CRRC in 2022 for Bangalore Metro’s rolling stock contract 4RS-DM.
With this contract squared away, we should see Surat Metro’s train design getting officially revealed by Titagarh or GMRC, or leaked out, in about 9 months from now. Stay tuned!
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– TMRG
That is really bad. 24 trains for 40km means they themselves don’t think there will be good ridership.
But then demand will be there only if there is good frequency
By rough calculation(per line), this calculates to about a train every 7 mins at peak frequency which seems alright to me for a tier 2 city and a brand new system.
Did you consider spares in your calculation? It will be more than that
Keeping spares and redundancy in mind it would be around a train per 10 mins at peak which would still be higher than what ahemdabad metro is doing right now (15 mins peak/30 mins regular).