Hyderabad, June 13: With the increase in the number of commuters taking MMTS trains and demand from passengers, six more trains will be added to the MMTS fleet.
These trains will have more commuter-friendly features when compared to the existing ones, including an increase in seating capacity.
The MMTS project wing of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) ordered for the six trains recently from the Integral Railway Coach Factory, Chennai.
“The Integral Coach Factory has asked the GHMC to pay an additional Rs 18.7 crore apart from the balance amount of Rs 13.5 crore paid by the state government which is lying with them for six years,” GHMC additional commissioner (traffic and transportation) S Subba Rao told TOI on Friday.
The state government is asking the Railway Board to bear 50 per cent of the amount of Rs 18.7 crore as the MMTS project was taken up by both the state government and South Central Railway (SCR) on a 50:50 sharing basis.
As of now, SCR has been running MMTS trains on three routes from Falaknuma to Lingampally, Hyderabad (Nampally) to Lingampally and Secunderabad to Lingampally.
When MMTS services started in August 2003 in the city, the number of passengers per day was just 30,000. It has now gone up to 1.30 lakh per day. The Falaknuma-Lingampally route comprises more than 50 per cent of daily passengers as software employees working with IT companies have started using the MMTS trains.
As of now, 94 trips are being operated by the SCR in these three routes with 10 trains. Each train has got only six cars (coaches). The highest number of trips (25) are being operated from Hyderabad to Lingampally and 21 trips from Lingampally to Hyderabad. Twenty trips are being run from Lingampally to Falaknuma.
When MMTS services were launched, the state government had paid about Rs 90 crore and placed an order for 16 trains but it got only 10 at the time of inauguration from the coach factory. As there was not much response from the passengers for these trains initially, the state government did not demand for the rest of the trains, until now.
But organisations like MMTS Travellers Group have been asking the SCR to increase the line capacity to run more trains and that funds should be allotted to take up MMTS Phase-II.
“There is a demand from passengers to increase the frequency of the trains but this has not been met as yet,” said K Vijayaraghavan of MMTS Travellers Group.
–Agencies