NEW DELHI: The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) is converting its remaining fleet of six-coach trains into eight-coach trains by adding 120 additional coaches on the Red (Rithala-Shaheed Sthal New Bus Adda), Yellow (HUDA City Centre-Samaypur Badli) and Blue Line (Dwarka-Noida Electronic City/Vaishali) to increase the passenger-carrying capacity of the network.
The conversion is expected to be completed by the end of this year after which all the trains running on these lines will be eight-coach ones.
"By the end of this month, the process of converting all 12 six-coach trains on Yellow Line into eight-coach ones will be completed, thereby taking the total number of eight-coach trains on this line to 64," a DMRC spokesperson said.
"Subsequently, remaining 9 six-coach trains on Blue Line and 39 six-coach trains on Red Line will be converted into eight-coach trains by the end of this year, taking the total number of eight-coach trains on these lines to 74 and 39, respectively," he said.
Out of these 120 coaches, 40 coaches have been procured from Bombardier and 80 coaches from Bharat Earth Movers Limited (BEML), he added.
"This activity is being carried out to increase the carrying capacity of the three main corridors of the Delhi Metro - Red Line, Blue Line and Yellow Line, which contribute to almost 40-50 % of passenger utilization every day," he further said, adding that these corridors, which were initially made operational under Phase-I, were built on Broad Gauge having provision of running trains up to eight-coach formation.
All the corridors that have come up subsequently, including the high-speed Airport Express Line, are built on Standard Gauge that allow sharper curves but have provision of running trains up to six-coach formation only.
"The Delhi Metro currently has a fleet of 336 trains sets comprising 181 six-coach trains, 133 eight-coach trains and 22 four-coach trains across all its corridors," he said.