TRANSNET’s controversial R2.6bn contract with a Chinese firm to build electric locomotives is up to six months behind schedule, raising questions about South Africa’s preference for doing business with China to advance its Brics ambitions.

 

The contract perplexed the rail industry when it was awarded last October, and reported in Business Day at the time — especially as Transnet overlooked established European train companies, saying the Chinese had agreed to "a tight delivery schedule".

 

China South Rail (CSR) is hoping to win a much bigger Transnet contract to supply 599 electric locomotives and 465 diesel ones in a deal worth about R35bn.

 

CSR’s Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Company let slip on Thursday that it would not be able to deliver the locomotives until possibly June next year, despite the two parties having agreed on a December delivery date. The 95-locomotive contract was awarded to CSR even though the company did not at the time have a locomotive with the specific configuration required.

 

In fact, it appears the locomotive does not yet exist, with the prototype for the dual electric locomotive contract still months away from completion. Among the losing bidders were China North Rail, Bombardier, Siemens and EMD, a unit of Caterpillar.

 

At the time, Transnet CEO Brian Molefe dismissed concerns about the absence of the locomotive from CSR’s portfolio. He said CSR manufactured locomotives that exceeded the design requirements of the locomotive sought by Transnet under the tender, and it would only be a matter of adjusting the engineering of an existing locomotive design.

 

The deal is also the subject of a probe by Public Protector Thuli Madonsela, after she received a request in December from the Cape Town-based Workers International Vanguard League.

 

The league said it wanted Ms Madonsela to investigate "due to the fact that CSR was awarded a deal in Namibia (worth R260m) for 22 locomotives, which were so fault-prone that they had to be withdrawn from service within weeks of being delivered".

 

Workers International Vanguard League secretary Shaheed Mahomed said on Thursday he was asked last week to submit an affidavit to the public protector by today to back the claim. There had been no update on the progress of the investigation and it appeared there was "foot-dragging".

 

On Thursday, Transnet Freight Rail itself appeared unaware of the delays, with CEO Siyabonga Gama saying the programme had been pushed out to January to accommodate the year-end slowdown in South Africa and the Chinese new year.

 

"The delivery of (the) first 10 locomotives to be manufactured in China is due in early January 2014. It does not change the commissioning date of March 2014 as locomotives must be tested before acceptance," Mr Gama said.

 

"Indications as things stand is that we will in fact receive the first 10 by December, but we allowed a further month. In terms of the schedule, the prototype will be ready in September. All locomotives will be delivered on time during 2014 and early 2015."

 

But Ying Yang, chief expert and deputy chief engineer in charge of the prototype design and assembly in China, said the first two prototype locomotives would be shipped to South Africa only in December. After that, performance tests would begin, which could last three months or more, depending on the results.

 

"After tests we may have modification (and then) batch production will follow," Mr Yang said.

 

"We may have some modification, maybe (we will) have some failures and we will have to modify the train — the first 10 will be shipped three to six months after the first prototypes."

 

The locomotive contract was signed with an emphasis on the deal being pursued in line with South Africa’s commitment to doing business with Brics bloc partner countries. In March, Transnet said it had signed a "groundbreaking" financing agreement with the China Development Bank, reportedly worth $5bn, and it linked the funding with a deepening of relations with China after the award of the contract to CSR.

 

CSR Zhuzhou president Xu Zongxiang said at the signing ceremony the company had a prototype running on its test track in China.

 

Two weeks ago, however, Mr Yang said in an interview that work had still not been completed on the designs for the prototype. There has been speculation that CSR threw everything at this tender, promising early delivery, local assembly, empowerment and a low price in order to gain an important foothold in the South African market. Transnet Freight Rail has one of the largest locomotive acquisition programmes in the world.

 

A source at Transnet recently voiced concerns within the organisation over the slow pace of progress with the 95-locomotive contract.

 

 

 

 

 

Conditions are harsh for workers on regional link, reports Hu Yongqi in Honghe, Yunnan

 

Most people search for a shady spot to avoid direct exposure to the mid-June sun that pushes temperatures to 39 C in Hekou Yao autonomous county bordering Vietnam.

 

However, Xie Yunchuan, 29, found the searing heat far more bearable than that in his place of work, the Taiyangzhai railway tunnel, where the temperature often rises to 43 C.

 

The trees glowed golden in the sunshine and the cicadas whirred to "express their antipathy to the hot weather", as a local saying goes. Feeling in need of refreshment, Xie hopped onto his motorcycle and headed off for lunch at an air-conditioned house nearby.

 

Inside the tunnel, air barely circulates, and Xie and his co-workers adopt measures to avoid suffocation and heatstroke, taking a break every two or three hours while another team continues the work.

 

"In many tunnels I've worked in, it's usually been quite cold inside. This is the first time I've encountered such high temperatures," he said.

 

The conditions mean the workers perspire more than usual. To avoid dehydration, Xie and his fellow workers have figured out how to make a refreshing, and possibly lifesaving, drink. They mix sugar, salt and tea and then place the concoction in the fridge before starting work.

 

Meanwhile, their company, the Fifth Bureau Group Corporation of China Railway, has spent 200,000 yuan ($32,600) on construction of an icehouse close to the entrance of the tunnel.

 

During every shift, six metric tons of ice are carried inside to lower the temperature in the tunnel, which will be 7,354 meters in length when completed. Despite working for four years, the team still has another 280 meters to drill before the tunnel will be finished, according to Jiang Jun, deputy head of the construction team.

 

The Taiyangzhai tunnel is a key part of the Mengzi-Hekou Railway, connecting Hekou Yao autonomous county and Mengzi, the capital of Honghe Hani and Yi autonomous prefecture in Yunnan province.

 

Upon completion next year, the 468-kilometer-long railway will reduce the current eight hour journey between Kunming, the provincial capital, and Hekou by half, according to Kunming Railway Bureau.

 

In the bigger picture, the Mengzi-Hekou Railway is the last component of a project that constitutes the eastern line of the Pan-Asia Railway, a crucial link between Southwest China and several Southeast-Asian countries.

 

Three new lines

 

The network will have three lines, eastern, central and western, and will run from Kunming to Singapore.

 

The eastern line will run from Kunming, via Mengzi and Hekou, in Yunnan, to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. It will then continue on to Phnom Penh in Cambodia, Bangkok in Thailand, Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, and right through to Singapore, its final destination.

 

The western line will travel through Dali and Ruili in Yunnan province, to Yangon in Myanmar and then on to Bangkok. The section between Kunming to Dali has already been completed.

 

The central line will run from Kunming to Jinghong, also in Yunnan. Later, if negotiations are successful, it will progress at Vientiane, the capital of Laos, and then Bangkok.

 

The new network will replace the existing Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, which is solely a cargo route between the two countries. However, the railway's low speed had long impeded bilateral trade.

 

The Mengzi-Hekou Railway, designed to run at 120 km per hour, will improve the transport capacity of Sino-Vietnamese trade and also aid exchanges among other Southeast-Asian countries. The railway authorities and local residents are confident that the new network will bring advantages to the region.

 

So far, 64 percent of the new Mengzi-Hekou Railway has been completed. The 143-km-railway, which will carry both passengers and cargo, is scheduled to begin operating in late 2014, according to Kunming Railway Bureau.

 

The line will have 32 tunnels and 36 bridges, accounting for 76 percent of its total length. So far, 29 of the tunnels have been completed, but the construction teams still have 4,858 meters of tunnel left to drill, the bureau said.

 

Taiyangzhai is one of six tunnels longer than 5 km. Their construction has presented the team with huge challenges, both physical and mental.

 

On June 22, Xie and 10 of his co-workers were sitting next to three large blocks of ice produced in the icehouse at the tunnel entrance. "Every 40 or 50 minutes, we must stop for a while and come out to cool off," said Guo Xinghai, 33.

 

The tunnel burrows through a chain of hills that rises to an average height of 500 meters. A 450-meter-long relief line, set at an angle of 45 degrees to the main shaft, carries away the broken rock and other waste from the construction process. The air in the main tunnel often becomes stagnant and the temperature soars whenever the boring machine is in operation. When the workers were reinforcing the walls, the fresh concrete gave out more heat and the temperature often rose to 45 C, said Jiang.

 

Even when the workers were motionless, it was easy to see the sweat drenching their skin despite the half-light in the wide tunnel. When a couple of colleagues and I visited the site to witness the construction work on June 23, we found it hard to breath after just 30 minutes in the tunnel. At a width of more than 3 meters, it can easily accommodate the motorcycles that some of the workers use to save time getting in and out.

 

The suffocating atmosphere has scared Jiang many times, but never more than when workers faint and fall limply to the ground. They are always sent for treatment at the nearest hospital, about 40 km distant. "I have fainted in the tunnel three times and on one extreme occasion I knew I was falling, but my body wouldn't follow my mind," he said.

 

Jiang ordered the workers to install air blowers to lower the temperature: "However, because the tunnel is 3.5 kilometers long, the two air blowers were unable to provide fresh air, and so we spent a further 100,000 yuan to install six more."

 

"Last week, when three workers fainted, they were foaming at the mouth. I was really scared. What if someone died in the tunnel? The conditions mean that many of the workers quit after just a short time. They say, 'I prefer having my life to having money'. The harsh conditions mean being safe is more important than earning cash."

 

Jiang has 10 "brother" workers who have helped him build tunnels on a number of important railway lines, such as the Wuhan-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway.

 

Other than these stalwarts, Jiang regards some of the other workers as migratory birds - since construction began, 1,000 of them have left the site after just one or two days.

 

Testing conditions

 

At other construction sites, problems, such as complicated rock formations and unpredictable subterranean water leakage, have tested the construction team's patience and technical skill, said He Huaijiao, the program manager for the Pingzhai Tunnel and the Mayinghe Bridge in Pingbian Miao autonomous county.

 

Three years ago, the workers experienced their largest washout when approximately 3,000 cubic meters of water gouged a huge depression in the floor of the tunnel. "There was no way to fix it, so we made a concrete bridge that covered the hole and allowed workers and vehicles through," said He. "Even with three pumps running 24 hours a day, we were unable to drain the water completely."

 

Because of the humidity and heat inside the tunnel, the workers were supplied with liquid cooling garments, which direct body heat away from the wearer. However, the 20-kilogram garments proved cumbersome and the men reverted to traditional methods and simply stripped down to their underclothes during their shifts.

 

The Yuxi-Mengzi Railway became operational in April, trimming the journey time from Kunming to Mengzi to just four hours, and providing fast passage for goods between China and Vietnam.

 

At Mengzi North Railway Station, fertilizers and construction materials, Kunming and Yuxi's main exports to Vietnam, were loaded onto the trains. As an important part of the eastern line of the Pan-Asian Railway, the Mengzi-Hekou Railway will continue the role once played by the Yuxi-Mengzi Railway.

 

Yunnan's original railway network connected with the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, built by the French government in the early 1900s. However, the 1-meter-wide track only allowed diesel locomotives to travel at a speed of 20 km per hour, meaning it took at least two days to carry cargo along the 468 km between Hekou and Kunming.

 

On the afternoon of June 24, two trains carrying fertilizer from Kunming arrived at Shanyao station, the transit point for Sino-Vietnamese trade, located 6 km from Hekou. One hour later, a Vietnamese locomotive pulling empty wagons arrived at the station. Once the customs procedures were completed, Vu Vu Quang, a Vietnamese border officer, took control of the trains for the Vietnamese stage of their journey. The wagons would be handed back on the next trip.

 

China's old diesel locomotives had 16 cars that could carry 30 tons of goods, only half the capacity of the trains that run on the new railway, which operates on the international standard gauge of 1.4 meters.

 

Import-export

 

In the first six months of this year, 182 trains carrying 5,463 tons of goods, mostly fertilizers and other industrial products, left Shanyao for Vietnam. At Hekou, tropical fruit and other agricultural produce are the most popular imports from Vietnam and have to reach Kunming within one day.

 

Qu Hongli, a transfer worker at Shanyao station, said the old trains were too slow to meet demand, and most goods were transported by road instead.

 

"I've been working at this station for 21 years and I remember the peak time when groups of businessman came to collect their purchases," she said, adding that in 1995 the daily exchange of goods at the station was equal to the present monthly volume.

 

"Vietnam still runs the narrow-gauge 1-meter-wide railway and so there has to be a transit station with track of equivalent gauge inside our borders," she said.

 

The Yuxi-Mengzi and Mengzi-Hekou Railways will act as a convenient link between China and Southeast-Asian markets, further strengthening cooperation and trade between China and other Southeast Asian countries, especially Vietnam, said Duan Gang, president of the Yunnan Institute of Economic Research.

 

Liu Baisheng, director of the Kunming Railway Bureau, said: "The Yuxi-Hekou Railway will help to improve the railway network and promote railway transport. In the future, Southwest China, especially Yunnan, will rely on the eastern line of the Pan-Asian Railway to accelerate integration with global markets, especially those in Southeast-Asia."

 

 

 

 

 

 

China's summer travel season begins today and will run till August the 31st. China's railway system is gearing itself up for tackling the summer rush, which always sees many students travelling between their homes and universities.

 

Another large-scale migration is underway. Around 390 million passengers are expected to journey by train during the summer travel rush. That's 29 million more than last year, an increase of 8 percent.

 

Each day, China's rail system carries an average of 6.3 million people. In the Summer time, most passengers are students heading home for summer vacation. Others are taking breaks from work to visit friends and relatives.

 

More trains have been added to the Beijing to Ningbo high speed line to link with the new high speed line in the east.

 

Rail authorities say they're encouraging passengers to use services at off-peak times, in order to reduce congestion.

 

 

  

 

INTERNATIONAL: China continues to set the pace in the global rail speed stakes, with its fastest trains achieving average point-to-point speeds more than 40 km/h faster than any other country, according to Railway Gazette’s latest World Speed Survey.

 

Authored this year by Jeremy Hartill of the UK’s Railway Performance Society, the biennial survey appears in full in the July issue of Railway Gazette International.

 

The survey compiles in tabular form the fastest timetabled start-to-stop journeys between different pairs of stations in countries around the world. Most of the fastest timings occur between intermediate stations, where average speeds are not impeded by slow approaches to major city hubs.

 

Looking at the overall results, China, France, Spain, Japan and Taiwan form the ‘champions’ league’ with their best start-to-stop timings averaging more than 250 km/h.

 

First place goes to Chinese Railways, which operates 22 trains daily over the 248 km between Shaoguan and Leiyang Xi in 47 min at an average of 316 km/h. Europe’s fastest trains remain SNCF’s TGV services on LGV Est linking Paris with Strasbourg and other towns in eastern France; TGV 5425 sprints the 167·6 km between Lorraine TGV and Champagne Ardenne TGV in 37 min at 271·8 km/h. Meanwhile, Spain overtakes Japan to take third place.

 

In total, nine countries now operate trains at average speeds higher than the once-hallowed 200 km/h mark. Turkey’s two-line high speed network is the latest to make the cut, with four trains averaging 203·5 km/h.

 

Elsewhere, Russia’s Sapsan service between Moscow and St Petersburg records the fastest timing for trains running over an upgraded conventional line; train 162 achieves a 194·5 km/h average between Bologoye and Chudovo. In the United States, Amtrak’s Acela Express tops the speed charts, with three services sprinting between Wilmington and Baltimore Penn on the Northeast Corridor at 169·4 km/h.

 

Perhaps surprisingly, Britain’s two fastest runs are found on the conventional network, with East Coast’s 18.55 York to Stevenage pipping Virgin Trains’ 19.42 Stafford to Watford Junction to the top spot with an average of 176·6 km/h for 259 km. Southeastern’s fast commuter services on High Speed 1 take third place with a best timetabled booking of 173·1 km/h.

 

At present there are no high speed trains in Africa, although one route is under construction in Morocco. Today, the fastest passenger services in Africa are the four daily trains between Oran and Alger, which average just 105 km/h for the 421 km journey.

 

The survey also throws up some startling comparisons, none more striking than Chinese Railways’ G79, which averages 278 km/h for the 2 298 km between Beijing and Guangzhou with three intermediate stops. Compare this to Amtrak’s Silver Meteor, which ambles the 2 224 km from Penn Station New York to Miami in 27 h 40 min at just 80·4 km/h with 18 stops.

 

China continues to rewrite the rules on high speed rail, as trains compete with air over ever greater distances. In the rest of the world, developments more closely reflect the trade-offs between distance, capacity, speed and operating costs of each particular network. Hartill suggests that the world’s high speed routes are likely to consolidate into distinct speed bands ranging from just over 200 km/h to 350 km/h or higher.

 

The full speed survey is available in the July issue of Railway Gazette International, available now to subscribers in our digital archive. It can also be purchased as a single issue via our tablet app, available in both the Apple iTunes store and on Google Play.

 

 

 

 

China Railway Corp, a spin-off of the former Ministry of Railways, has announced its decision to develop the high-speed rail express business in a bid to make gains in the country's logistics market.

 

Currently in China, about 80 percent of express deliveries are carried out on the road, 15 percent via air and 5 percent via railway and other modes of transport, according to Hong Houxing, an analyst with Anbang Logistics.

 

Sun Zhang, a professor from the Urban Mass Transit Railway Research Institute at Shanghai's Tongji University, said the proportion of rail express' share in the country's logistic market only counted for about 1 percent.

 

"Express delivery by rail will grow for sure in the long run as it's faster compared to road transportation and costs less than cargo flights," said Hong, adding that air freight is also believed to be more vulnerable to weather conditions.

 

"Take the trail of high-speed rail delivery between Guangzhou in southern China's Guangdong province to Changsha in central China's Hunan province launched last year as example - the cost is 1.5 yuan per kilo, 25 percent less than delivering by air," he said.

 

Hong said that airfreight is most suited for long-distance express deliveries that need to travel more than 1,000 km; rail is most suited for deliveries in a radius from 500 to 1,000 km; and delivery vans are most suited for deliveries in a 500 km radius.

 

Though distances between Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou are under 500 km, Hong still believed the new Nanjing-Hangzhou and Hangzhou-Ningbo lines would reshape the country's logistics landscape as they are parts of the essential rail routes to link cities in the Yangtze River Delta to Fujian and Hainan provinces in the south.

 

"In some foreign countries, many intercity railways are used for cargo transport during off-peak times, such as late at the night, and we can learn from it," said transport professor Sun Zhang. "The hours between midnight and five o'clock in the morning are the busiest for express delivery companies but off-peak hours for riders."

 

Considering Ningbo's Beilun Port, which faces the vast Pacific Ocean, Sun said stitching Hangzhou and Ningbo together by rail would be fundamental in the development of the country's sea-railway transportation.

 

However, issues such as inadequate infrastructure facilities and the task of merging the passenger train information system with the express information system need to be sorted out before attaching more freight to passenger trains or converting more passenger trains into freight trains, said Hong.

 

In the meantime, industry insiders believe that high-speed services free traditional trains for cargo transport and therefore increase transportation capacity for commodities such as coal, steel, rice oil and ore.

 

Commenting on the launch of the world's longest high-speed rail route from Beijing to Guangzhou last December, Chu Hai, an analyst with Ping'an Securities, said the old route would be able to run more cargo trains after the high-speed service operated.

 

"Closing a passenger train can add a transport capacity of one-and-a-half to two cargo trains," he said, adding that cargo transportation is more profitable.

 

 

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A bullet train traveling between Hangzhou and Nanjing parks at the Hangzhou East Raiway Station in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, July 1, 2013. The Nanjing-Hangzhou-Ningbo high-speed railway that stretches across east China's Yangtze River Delta began officially put into operation on July 1.

 

 

 

Chinese and European senior officials urged further cooperation through the Sino-Euro railway on Wednesday.

 

The 11,179-km Chongqing-Xinjiang-Europe railway connects Chongqing with Duisburg, Germany, via Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus and Poland.

 

"I hope the Sino-Euro railway can extend to all 16 Central and Eastern European countries," said Huang Qifan, mayor of Southwest China's Chongqing municipality, at the Local Leaders' Meeting of China-Central and Eastern European Countries in Chongqing on Wednesday.

 

He said the customs departments of these countries should strengthen cooperation to shorten the time needed to process goods and thus save costs for transporting freight via the route.

 

Customs should work together and share information so freight owners can make only one declaration, have one inspection and one release, and avoid opening carriages at each customs stop, which is time-consuming, Huang suggested.

 

The current Chongqing-Xinjiang-Europe railway has helped some businesses shorten transportation times and save costs since it began operation in 2011, Huang said.

 

The rail link transports the city's goods from IT, auto, medical electronics and other sectors to European markets. The total value of import and export freight has reached $3 billion, he said.

 

The complete trip takes 16 days, less by up to 20 days than the usual shipping time. The cost is one-fifth that of transporting cargo by air, Huang said.

 

Victor Ponta, prime minister of Romania, also spoke highly of the Sino-Euro railway, saying the line will contribute to the quality of people's lives along the way.

 

However, challenges still exist. Most freight from coastal cities to the Central and Eastern European countries is still transported by ship to Rotterdam, and then transferred by air or road to Russia and Central and Eastern European countries, Huang said.

 

To achieve steady train transportation requires sufficient supplies for both imports and exports, but the Chongqing-Europe railway lacks exports from European countries, participants of the meeting said.

 

Germany, the final stop of the railway in Europe, has high demands for exporting to China by train.

 

"Germany's exports to China consist mainly of cars, machines and other heavy technological goods for which transport costs - which are cheaper on the sea route - generally are a more important factor than transport times," said Gerold Amelung, the German consul-general in Chengdu.

 

He said the majority of opportunities offered by the new transport route are used by Chinese exporters.

 

"However, almost half of all Chinese imports from Europe originate in Germany. For the long-term success of this project - and to fully mobilize its economic potential - it is crucial that the capacity of this route is used fully in both directions," he added.

 

Boleslaw Kosciukiewicz, the minister counselor of the embassy of the Republic of Poland in Beijing, said Poland is very interested in increasing trade with China via the railway.

 

"Our imports from China are 10 times larger than our exports to China," he said.

 

Kosciukiewicz said that increasing exports to China is his country's main interest, as it exports leather goods, jewelry and food products, including pork and chicken.

 

The Freight Rail Transport industry in China operates railways for the transportation of freight across China. The industry comprises state-owned railways as well as local railways (invested and operated by local governments) for transferring freight or cargo. Management and operations of railway terminals and station facilities are not included in this industry.

 

Existing rail freight capacity in China can no longer meet the country’s rapidly growing transportation demand. As a result, the Chinese government is making substantial investments into the expansion of the nationwide railway network. By 2020, total investment is expected reach $216.0 billion and the network 120,000 kilometers, says IBISWorld. Although a large proportion of this investment is dedicated to railways for passenger traffic, the Freight Rail Transport industry will benefit as existing railways are freed up for freight traffic.

 

The Freight Rail Transport industry is expected to generate $36.2 billion in 2013. Over the five years through 2013, industry revenue has been growing 7.5% per year, says IBISWorld. This industry is subject to a medium concentration level as the top four players account for about 40.0% of industry revenue. Rail transportation businesses in China are dominated by 18 railway administrations under the Ministry of Railway, including the Taiyuan, Xi'an and Wuhan Railway Administrations that were established in March 2005.

 

The government has announced it will dismantle the original Railway Ministry and set up the China Railway Corporation to run transportation nationwide. This new entity will have the ability to implement reforms to the current rail transport pricing mechanisms, which has the potential to significantly affect the industry as freight transport pricing is currently market-oriented.

 

Due to investment shortages on railways and the inadequate railway transportation capacity, private capital and foreign investments have been encouraged by the government in recent years. The combination of the Ministry of Railway's role as both government organization and industry player, along with the policy of uniform scheduling and pricing, makes investing in the railway industry risky and relatively unattractive for many private firms. However, as reforms are made in the industry (like the transition to a market-oriented pricing mechanism), non-state-owned players are expected to increase in the industry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

ASHGABAT – In less than two years, the annual volume of cargo travelling by rail in Eurasia in both directions will grow to 25m tonnes, Natalya Ovezova, a consultant at the Turkmen Economic Development Ministry Institute of Strategic Planning and Economic Development, said in a June 24 article published by the State News Agency of Turkmenistan.

 

The cargo traffic will increase because the North-South (Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan) and Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Tajikistan (TAT) rail corridors will come online, she said. Kyrgyzstan has expressed interest in joining the TAT project, she said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation witnessed a record breaking number of commuters travelling in its trains on Monday.

 

“Delhi Metro recorded the highest ever ridership figure of 23,62,279 on July 1, which surpassed the earlier record set on June 18, when 23,32,298 people travelled by the metro,” a DMRC official said.

 

This figure excludes the Airport Line ridership which was 10,300 on July one, the first day of its operations under the supervision of DMRC.

 

The highest footfall was recorded on Lines 3 and 4 (Dwarka Sec-21 to Noida City Centre/Vaishali) with 9.25 lakh commuters using the train to reach their destination.

 

While Line 2 (Jahangirpuri to HUDA City Centre) recorded second highest commuters at 8.60 lakh and Line 1 (Dilshad Garden to Rithala) recorded 3,21,857 commuters.

 

Line 5 (Inderlok/Kirti Nagar to Mundka) recorded the least number of passengers at 84,243 and Line-6 (Central Secretariat to Badarpur) saw a footfall of 1,69,487 people.

 

 

 

 

 

Kochi: Trade unions on Wednesday, came to an agreement with officials of L&T over the issue of employing local workers in the Kochi Metro work. L&T was one of the agencies which had won the contract for Metro work.

 

As per the agreement, the contractors agreed to give 50 per cent representation to local union members in piling work. For work on the super-structure which demanded more skilled labour, the local participation would be restricted to one-third.

 

The contractors convened a meeting with the CITU and the INTUC here on Wednesday after they were given a representation by the unions. The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation which is executing the project and implementing the Kochi Metro Rail Ltd had asked the contractors to look into the matter.

 

According to CITU Ernakulam district president K.N. Gopinath, L&T officials agreed to go by the formula followed by the Builders Association of India (BAI). He clarified that the unions would ensure that the work would in no way be affected.

 

“It’s not our policy to stall such a major development work. Our only demanded was that the BAI agreement be followed which is the general policy for construction works. We have also made it clear that those already brought for work from outside should not be replaced”, he added.

 

INTUC secretary K.P. Haridas said other issues like wages and working conditions would be discussed later since L&T had engaged a number of sub-contractors. He too made it clear that the work would in no way be disrupted. The DMRC had engaged local workers for its work on the North and A.L. Jacob rail overbridges as part of the Metro’s preparatory work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation on Friday rejected a notice sent by Reliance Infra, which runs the Airport Metro line, and requested it continue operations beyond June 30. Earlier, Reliance Infra had in a June 27 letter to DMRC warned it could not run the Airport Metro after Sunday due to huge losses.

 

The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation board met Friday and termed the letter a “violation” of the concession agreement.

 

But in case Reliance Infra refuses to operate it, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation “will step in and run it in the larger public interest”.