In what could come as a big relief to daily passengers, the Northern Railway is planning to run EMU trains with 15 coaches between the national capital and its peripheral towns.
At present, EMU trains running in metros and other places in the country consist of 10 to 12 coaches.
The move is aimed at providing relief to commuters during rush hours, a Northern Railway official said."As a first step in this direction, we plan to run a 15-coach EMU train between New Delhi and Aligarh," he said.
Running EMU trains with more coaches would hardly pose any problem to the Railways as the stations on these routes already have longer platforms that can accommodate 15-coach EMUs.
The Commissioner of Railway Safety will, however, give the final go-ahead to run these EMUs.
Running of local trains with more coaches is increasingly becoming a necessity in view of the exponential growth in the number of passengers commuting by these trains.
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In the first 10 days of this month alone, 116.51 million passengers bought tickets in the suburban section across the country.
During the first half of the ongoing fiscal, number of passengers who bought tickets in the suburban section were 1888.51 million.Several other zones including Central and Western Railways, where passenger rush in suburban trains is even more than Northern Railway, are toying with the idea of running longer EMUs.
"However, scarcity of coaches is coming in the way of implementing such plans," the official said.
"There are also plans to run even longer trains comprising 18 to 20 coaches in the coming years, but the plans are still being worked out," he added.