Airport Metro: Speed trial run from Friday

In a step forward for the Airport Express Metro, speed trials will be conducted on the 22 km stretch of the showcase corridor.

In a step forward for the Airport Express Metro, speed trials will be conducted on the 22 km stretch of the showcase corridor.

HT Image

It’s been a year since the Delhi Metro first decided to increase the speed of the Airport Express, to take it to 120km per hour.

For this, the DMRC had sought approval from the Research, Design and Standards Organisation (RDSO) in January.

Once the speed is increased to 120 km per hour, the commuting time between New Delhi station and Dwarka will be cut down by four to five minutes. The current travel time on the corridor is 21 minutes.

And now RDSO has finally approved a trial run on the stretch of the showcase corridor that is scheduled to start from Friday.

“RDSO will conduct a speed trial on the corridor from Friday for three to four days. The findings will then be submitted to the commissioner of metro rail safety (CMRS). If CMRS finds it safe to run trains on the corridor at a speed of 120 km per hour, instead of existing 105 km per hour, we will immediately increase the speed limit of trains,” said Mangu Singh, director (works), Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC).

A few days ago, Delhi Metro chief E Sreedharan had expressed his unhappiness with the concessionaire company, Reliance Infrastructure, in running the Airport Express.