By Adeyinka Aderibigbe
The dream of activating commercial activity on the Lagos metro rail came closer to reality as the Lagos State Government on Tuesday took delivery The Red Rail cars.The rail cars, to be propelled by Diesel Multiple Unit locomotives were bought earlier this year from the City of Talgo, in Milwaukee, the United States, which had put them for sale.A statement published by the Commissioner for Information and Strategy Mr Gbenga Omotoso on his verified Twitter handle and Facebook Timeline described the arrival of the railcars as epochal and a milestone in the vision of the Babajide Sanwoy administration to introduce rail modes I to the Transportation mode mix in the state.He said with the train’s arrival, the dream to deliver the operations of the red line rail system by first quarter of 2023 becomes surer.The red line is a 37 kilometre long rail system that begins from Agbado and terminates at Oyingbo, in the first phase, while the second and final phase is to extend from Oyingbo to Marina. The first phase shares the same corridor, with the Nigerian Railway Corporation’s Lagos-Ibadan Standard Guage, as well as the narrow gauge has eight train stations, with two of them (Oyingbo and Agbado) being mega stations that will incorporation a railway worksyard, and incorporating other activities.Other stations on which works are already about 70 percent completed are Yaba, Mushin, Oshodi (which would be redesigned to work with Terminal Three of the new multi-terminals), and Ikeja. Other stations are Agege, Iju, and Agbado.The Central Bank had facilitated a consortium of six banks to provide a N165 billion loan facility for the construction of the Blue line and Red Line rail systems the first phase of which is expected to begin commercial operation by first quarter next year.The Talgo series 8 Trains, which would be the flagship for the red line, that were acquired for the train network.The 2 No. ten and Eleven car trains which were bought from Milwaukee Omotoso said would be decoupled to 21 individual cars for effective transportation within the city centre of Lagos. “The train will be recoupled with the help of rolling stock engineers from Talgo, the company that manufactured the trains. “The engineers will also train local engineers whilst they are here in order to equip our young people in the requisite skills. Once the recouping is complete, the testing and commissioning will commence followed by full passenger operations first quarter 2023. “Each train has the capacity to carry 1500 passengers and is expected to run on the red line rail from Agbada to Oyingbo, with the journey taking less than 30minutes.”When fully on stream the blue and red lines are expected to carry over a million passenger traffic monthly, and help decongest many of the roads within the state.