Coach with 14 seats will be close to driver’s cab, one section to be earmarked for women
Chennai Metro Rail will have a first class compartment, and within it a women’s section, according to official sources and a bid document put up on its website.
Both Delhi and Bangalore Metro Rail have only one class of compartments. The Delhi Metro Rail has a separate coach for women.
“The first class will be close to the driver’s cab and a part of this coach will be reserved for women,” said an official of Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL). The official bid document ‘Operations and Maintenance Services for Phase 1 of Chennai Metro System’ mentions the first class rake in the four-car arrangement.
The first class compartment will have 14 seats and the other compartments 44 seats each. Each train will also have four seats earmarked for the elderly and four for the differently abled.
“There is nothing special about the first class coach except that the seats will have some extra cushioning and there will be limited space available for passengers to keep their baggage,” the official added.
Sources in CMRL said that the fares for first class may be twice as expensive as those for second class.
The Metro is coming up at a cost of Rs. 14,600 crore along two corridors – one connecting Washermanpet to the airport; and the other Chennai Central to St. Thomas Mount. The project is likely to become operational in the middle of next year in the Koyambedu–St.Thomas Mount stretch, and will be fully functional by 2015.
The network will have a total of 42 trains. Nine of these are being made in Brazil and the remaining at the special economic zone, Sri City in Andhra Pradesh.
Test run next week
The test run for the first train that arrived from Sao Paolo in Brazil in July is likely to happen on the 800-metre test track at the Koyambedu depot next week. The trains will run at an average speed of 34 km/hr from 5 a.m. to 12 a.m.
This article has been corrected for an editing error.
Keywords: Chennai Metro, CMRL, first class compartment, test run
This move is unnecessary. Metro is to reduce congestion. First class coach will
reduce number of commuters by half for the same unit area. Very objective is lost.
Government should interfere and should immediately stop this.
The total projected cost of providing this infrastructure runs to huge thousands of crores. One can not run a service of this kind purely on social cost basis. It should generate adequate returns. People living in Chennai city were aware of the popularity of A. C. buses running under Chennai metro transport system. The metro Rail authorities are justified in going ahead with proposed First class coach. Further, train services are much faster and smooth riding.
It makes sense to have coaches marked as first-class when you have 9 or
12 coaches as in suburban trains.But with metro going to run with
maximum 6 coaches, the idea of first-class is really stupid.It can
rather be reserved for senior citizens or ladies like in Delhi Metro (it
is the benchmark for all metro projects in India until emulated by some
other city)
Never heard of metro trains following the class consciousness of British
India's masters and servants. India is not just incredible, it is
anachronistic as well.
How different is the first class compartment going to be??
And what is the use if there are only 14 seats to it?
They should give preference to elderly only if there 1st class.
I agree with sadhir, this is a ridiculous idea. Why are we still
obsessed with this first class business.
The situation in chennai will become as farcical as in Mumbai. A new
person in Mumbai gets into a first class compartment and immediately a
Ticket examiner fines him some 200 rupees.
That is not a good idea considering the Metros main agenda should
be transport as many people as possible. I doubt if there would be
any real use for the first class at all which is probably why none
of the other metros have such a facility. I hope they are only on
experiment mode and would revisit the idea later.
Poor idea. Why this distinction ? just because you want more money ?
This is a terrible Idea! I have never heard of a subway with first class
compartments and for good reason. The idea should be to make as many
people as possible to use public transportation, and hence the main
objective is to increase the capacity of the subway as much as possible.
The only reason anyone would want to travel first class would be to
avoid the crowds, but the solution for that should be to increase
capacity by increasing train frequency, not limiting the available
capacity
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