Bangladesh's first-ever metro on Sunday completed its performance test on the Uttara-Agargaon route as part of a plan to carry passengers by December next year.

The rail started its journey from Uttara's Diabari at around 9:39am on Sunday and reached the Agargaon station around 10:45am, sources said.

The train travelled to Mirpur 10 from Uttara at 100kmph and from there to Agargaon at 15-25mkph.

Prior to the planned passenger-free performance test run in 11.73km Uttara-Agargaon segment, metro trains went through a number of test runs.

DMTCL conducted the first test run from Uttara Diabari to Mirpur12 on August 29 this year, which was later extended to Mirpur-10.

Performance tests are being carried out in three parts. At first, metro rail plied between three stations. In the second step, the test run was done between six stations upto Mirpur-10.

And finally, it is being carried out in the whole Uttara-Agargaon segment out of 20.10km metro rail elevated track from Uttara to Motijheel. 

The performance test will be done for six months from last August and then an integrated test will be carried out for the following three months.

Subsequently, metro rail will be put on trial run for another five months to make it ready for plying within the Uttara-Agargaon first phase by December next year. 

The scheme is being implemented spending nearly Tk 220 billion, major portion of which is coming from Japan government. Its completion deadline is June 2024.

A total of 24 train sets, each set having six coaches including two locomotives at both sides, are being procured from Japan.

BDST: 1420 HRS, DEC 12, 2021
SMS