SOUTH KOREA: The SG Rail special purpose company formed to design, finance and build Line A of the Great Train Express network of commuter lines around Seoul has awarded Hyundai Rotem a 345bn won contract to supply 15 trainsets by 2024.
The eight-car trains to be built at Hyundai Rotem’s Changwon plant will have a capacity of 1 090 passengers. While broadly based on metro car design, the EMUs will have a higher maximum speed of 180 km/h, and thus will have noise reduction measures, a greater level of air-tightness and stronger walls and doors to withstand the pressure waves when trains enter or leave tunnels at speed.
Annoucing the contract on March 20, Hyundai Rotem said it hoped the contract could be followed by orders for GTX lines B and C.
The three GTX fast commuter lines are being built to provide shorter journey times to Seoul’s outlying suburbs and new towns, with the aim of reducing pressure on housing closer to the city and relieving overcrowding on the metro.
The 83·1 km Line A will run in tunnel from Unjeong in the northwest of the commuter region to Dongtan in the southeast, with 10 stations. The end-to-end journey time will be slightly more than 40 min, less than half the journey time on the current metro services.
