Bids received for namma metro coaches

Its time to talk about the coaches but this time its not about the Indian Cricket team. BMRC said that they have received pre-qualification tenders from seven companies interested in building the coaches for namma metro.

This is the list of bidders from the DH article

* Fireman Transport SPA, Caserata, Italy

* Norico, China Changchun railway Co, China Jessop and Co Ltd, Kolkata

* Siemens AG, Earlangen, Germany Siemens Ltd, New Delhi
* Bombardier Transportation, Berlin, Germany Bombardier Transportation India Ltd, New Delhi

* BEML, Bangalore Rotem, South Korea Mitsubishi Corporation, Tokyo, Japan Mitsubishi Electric, Tokyo, Japan
* Alsthom Transport SA, Perret, France Alsthom Projects, Mumbai

* CAF SA, Madrid, Spain

Alstom has one of the biggest global presence in this area. They have been instrumental in Metro networks of at least 17 cities worldwide including the cities of London, Hongkong, Singapore, Istanbul, Sao Paolo etc. Its also no coincidence that they are also one of worlds biggest providers of railway carriages too (non-metro).

From their website, the typical Metropolis carriage has the following specs

2 to 9 cars

I have personally seen the coaches built by them in London and Singapore and I did not have much to complain at least from the passenger point of view.

Siemens transport also have a significant global footprint on par with that of Alstom.

Bombardier has successfully commissioned coaches in several major cities in Europe and China including Paris. Below is a typical Layout and specs of a Bombardier coach.

(seeing the way BMTC is currently crowded, I think we have about 6 pass/m2)

Our own BEML has been building coaches for a long time but their website does not provide much information about the commissioned projects and the specs of the coaches.

Narinco is a Chinese company primarily involved in civil and defense contracting. They have apparently commissioned one electric Railway system in Tehran. Not much information available about their tech specs though. On a funnier note, Chinese products are not particularly well known for their quality. See, even wind can blow chinese rail cars off the track.

I dont know if Fireman Transport is good at building coaches, but we surely know they are not so good at building a website. I could not find information about them from a preliminary google search.

So that is a first-cut view about the kind of coaches we are expected to see on namma metro. Soon we would know who won the contracts. Till then try imagining getting used to the 'Please mind the gap' announcement ubiquitous to the metros worldwide.

Disclaimer.: I have remote associations with one of the organisations mentioned above. I am however speaking here for myself and not for any of the organisations I am involved with.