Ahmedabad: Metro-Link Express for Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad (MEGA) Company Limited, the implementing agency for Ahmedabad metro rail project, has awarded the contract for manufacturing 96 metro coaches (rolling stock) to Hyundai Rotem of South Korea. The contact valued at Rs 1,025 crore was given on October 13.
MEGA had invited bids for the metro rail system’s rolling stock in January 2016 and received bids from four companies – Alstom, Bombardier, CRRC and Hyundai Rotem.
Out of these, only three were found to be substantially meeting the requirement of eligibility criteria.
CRRC, the fourth bidder, was disqualified on the grounds that the Chinese staterun company was not fulfilling the technical and financial eligibility criterion. The bidding process was delayed as CRRC took legal route challenging its disqualification by MEGA. According to an official statement issued by MEGA, the Gujarat High Court last week dismissed CRRC’s petition challenging its disqualification.
Hyundai Rotem will supply 32 three-car trainsets for Ahmedabad metro’s 39.259km phase 1 project. The trains will be manufactured at their Changwon plant and deliveries are expected to take place by next year,” the statement added.
The first phase will connect four corners of the Ahmedabad city with two corridors and 32 stations. While North-South corridor (18.522 km) will connect Motera Stadium to APMC, Vasna, the East-West corridor (20.737 km) will connect Vastral to Thaltej.
Ahmedabad’s new 2.90 meter wide trains will have a maximum speed of 80kmph and a carrying capacity for 782 passengers. It will be capable of running on the “driverless” unattended train operations (UTO) mode like the Delhi Metro’s new RS-10 rolling stock. Each coach will have convenient space for wheelchair users, four CCTV cameras for passenger safety, fire detectors, LED route guide indicators and a LCD passenger information display system.
With this contract, Hyundai Rotem has forayed into another Indian city after Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Jaipur and Kolkata. The South Korean company is associated with metro rail projects in these cities.
