After Delhi metro, Bombardier looks to supplying railways

After metro cars and signalling systems, Bombardier Transportation is now looking to tap Indian Railways’ growing need for electric multiple unit (EMU) cars for inter-city EMU trains. The global rail vehicle manufacturing company is preparing itself to bid for the coming tenders for this.

"While we are doing well in the supply of metro cars to the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), we now want to go for Indian Railways and bid for locomotives, EMU cars and inter-city EMU trains. We will accordingly consolidate our Savli plant if we win bid of the ministry of railways in future," said Harsh Dhingra, whole-time director and chief country representative - India at Bombardier Transportation.

While the company doesn't manufacture EMU cars or trains in India as of now, it does assemble locomotives at its Savli facility near Vadodara in Gujarat as part of its agreement with Electro-Motive Diesel (EMD), a subsidiary of Progress Rail Services Corporation, a Caterpillar company. The facility currently has a capacity of one metro car a day.

Talking about expansion of metro car capacity, Dhingra said, "Our expansion will depend on future orders. While we have bid for third phase of Delhi Metro, we will be submitting bids for second phase of Bangalore Metro, apart from Kochi, Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar and Mumbai metro projects."

According to Dhingra, Bombardier estimates an order book of 500 metro cars from Delhi, 300 from Bangalore, 100 each from Kochi and Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar and about 120-150 from Mumbai metro projects.

The company expects demand for metro cars in the country to touch 2,000 in next 5 years. By next year, Bombardier is planning to begin exporting its locomotives to countries in regions like South East Asia as well as Pacific. Moreover, while currently Bombardier's signalling office and the software development centre are also located at Savli, Vadodara, which develops software for signalling and traction applications, the company is readying to provide traffic management systems (TMS) for Indian Railways.

Meanwhile, as for the Metrolink Express for Gandhinagar-Ahmedabad (MEGA) project, Bombardier Transportation has qualified for bidding for rolling stock and signalling system.