Matro rail makes formal test run

Metro rail train has made its first official journey atop the viaducts in a test run for Dhaka’s new mass transit service.

Road Transport Minister Obaidul Quader inaugurated the test journey at Uttara’s Diabari Depot on Sunday.

The train, consisting of six carriages, made a trip from the depot to the Mirpur 12 Station and back.

Dhaka Mass Transit Company Limited Managing Director MAN Siddique, representatives from the Japanese Embassy in Bangladesh, the head of the JICA offices in Bangladesh and advisors to the metro rail project also attended the event.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will inaugurate three major infrastructure projects next year, Obaidul Quader said. These will be the Padma Bridge, the Karnaphuli Tunnel and the Metro Rail Line-6.

Currently, the metro rail depot in Diabari has two trains, each with six carriages. The first set arrived in Dhaka on Apr 21 and the second on Jun 1.

The electric trains made their first trip in front of the media on May 11, making a short journey inside the depot.

Construction is underway on six metro rail lines in Dhaka and its surrounding areas under the supervision of DMTCL. Line-6 is the one scheduled for completion first. The total cost of the venture is an estimated Tk 220 billion.

In 2017, Bangladesh ordered 24 sets of trains from Japan’s Kawasaki-Mitsubishi consortium for the project. The train sets, which have two engines on either side and four carriages between them, are being built in Japan.

According to the latest information from DMTCL, work on Line-6, which stretches 20.1 kilometres from Uttara to Motijheel, is 66.49 percent complete. And the 12 kilometres of the train line from Uttara to Agargaon is 88.18 percent complete.

Though the project was initially set for completion by 2024, there is a new target of completing the section from Uttara to Agargaon by December 2022.

The government had initially set December 2021 as the target for the Uttara-Agargaon section, but the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic significantly delayed work on the rail line.