Metro Train fleet will increase by 30% until 2016, says the Rio de Janeiro government

The Governor of Rio de Janeiro, Luiz Fernando Pezão, The state secretary of Transportation, Carlos Roberto Osório, and the CEO of Metro, Flavio Almada, presented the first of Line 4 (Barra da Tijuca – Ipanema) 15 new trains in the morning of this Thursday (5).

The first composition will go through 90 days of tests. According to the schedule, another 14 trains will arrive in Brazil until 2015. With this, the metro train fleet will be 30% larger — it will be 64 compositions.

The train was built in China, and it has a capacity for 1.8 thousand people, six cars, air conditioning, internal passage between cars, Led panels and monitoring cameras. It is expected  a reduction of two thousand cars  per hour at rush hour in the streets. The Project is the same of those compositions operating in MetroRio since 2012.

The new compositions will start operation by the end of the first semester of 2016. According to Osório, two new compositions are already embarked towards Rio de Janeiro.

It is expected that 300 thousand people per day will benefit from metro’s Line 4.

“Resources for this work are guaranteed in account “, asserted Pezão, who pointed the jobs generated by Line 4 construction, around 9 thousand.

According to the governor, the state is going through a difficult moment, but he says that, “it is necessary to look ahead” and form partnerships.  “I am sure that joining forces we will be able to keep growing “.

He further stated that it is under studies to take the metro to Recreio. “Metro is dignity for the population and we have to maximize the reach for the Metropolitan Region”, said the governor.

Pezao also talked about the need to readapt the state’s budget due to the oil crisis. He added that the state is up to date with its commitments for the 2016 Olympics. “The most difficult was this work here [metro]”.