THE Light Rail Manila Corp. (LRMC)) on Wednesday rolled out the first of its brand new fourth generation trains along the LRT Line 1 seen to deliver a “modern, efficient, and world-class railway transport system in the country.”
President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. presided at the inauguration rites for the new coaches that went through a series of safety checks, inspections, trial runs, and acceptance tests following their arrival from Spain and Mexico in January 2021.
The new trains were manufactured by Mitsubishi Corp, and Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrorcarriles (CAF) of Spain.
The state-of-the art trains with a capacity of 1,388 passengers at four coaches per trip beef up the existing three generation fleet of LRT 1 serving the Roosevelt, Quezon City-Baclaran, Parañaque City route.
“LRMC has remained steadfast in upgrading commuter experience and committed to our mission of delivering safe and efficient transport since we took over the operations in 2015. Today marks another significant milestone in modernizing our train infrastructure with the inauguration of our first new Generation-4 trains,” LRMC president and chief executive officer Juan Alfonso said.
“This is a testament of private-public partnership (PPP successfully working for the Filipino people. Our brand-new trains signal hope and give our Filipino commuters something positive to look forward to in their next LRT-1 commute,” he added.
Starting 20 July 2023, LRT-1 will deploy one Gen-4 train set which will be used for the main line to serve commuters daily.
The deployment will follow the progressive handover of DOT and LRTA to LRMC and the capacity requirement of the system, with one new Gen-4 train set added to the main line every week until December 2023.
Currently, there are 20 4th Generation train sets already in the Philippines, and the remaining 10 train sets are still expected to arrive from Mexico between November 2023 and February 2024. Complete deployment of the 30 train sets on the main line is expected by 04 2024 when the LRT-1 Cavite Extension Project opens.