Dhaka Metro Rail goes on trial run

A train of six metro rail coaches was put on a pre-trial run on Diya Bari-Mirpur Road on Friday morning. At 10:00am, the rail ran with six compartments to four stations.The first trial run and performance test will be held on Sunday morning. MAN Siddique, managing director of Dhaka Mass Transit Company Ltd, said, "We will carry out performance test of metro-rail on viaduct from Uttara depot to Pallabi on Sunday."

Road Transport and Bridges Minister Obaidul Quader will inaugurate the performance test, he added. Bangladesh's long wait for its first-ever metro rail is going to be over by December 2022 as work on the project has gained momentum despite disruptions by the coronavirus pandemic.Though the metro rail project had initially targeted 2024 as its completion date, the MRT-6 section of the project, spanning from Uttara to Agargaon, was moved forward to 2021 at the order of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

The coronavirus pandemic, however, has been a set back and now the authorities aim to complete the work for the partial launch in 2022. Four sets of trains -- each comprising six air-conditioned coaches -- have already reached Bangladesh from Japan and five more sets are scheduled to arrive by September next.

In 2017, the Kawasaki-Mitsubishi Consortium of Japan was given the contract to build 28 sets of trains.  There will be a total of 144 coaches for the 24 train sets that will run on a 21km-route from Uttara to Kamalapur Railway Station via Agargaon, Farmgate, Dhaka University campus and Motijheel. There will be a total of 17 stations, according to project documents.

The metro rail is expected to cut down the time needed to travel from Uttara to Motijheel from hours to just 35-40 minutes. The cost of the project is estimated to be nearly Tk 220 billion. The lion's share of the funding comes from the Japan International Cooperation Agency, a government agency that provides development assistance.