Minister Florencio Randazzo presented the new trains in Tigre (photo: Prensa Ministerio Interior/jcp)
The new trains on the Mitre commuter line connecting Retiro with Tigre started working yesterday.
The brand new trains were purchased by the national government to Chinese manufacturers and replaced the old cars that were in operation until Saturday. “We have removed all of the trains made up of Puma and Toshiba cars from the ’60s, part of which was already out of commission,” said Interior and Transport Minister Florencio Randazzo.
The Minister referred to the benefits the new trains will bring commuters who use this line, which connects the city of Buenos Aires with the north of the Greater Buenos Aires. “The new trains will be able to serve up to four million passengers per month, almost twice the amount the old ones could serve in the same period, whilst they will have a frequency of a train every 14 minutes to begin with, and then it will be a train every ten [minutes], when before they used to come every 18 or 20 minutes.”
Randazzo added that “within the next two months” new trains will replace the existing ones on the José León Suárez and Mitre branches, making all the trains in the Mitre line brand new.
The next line to be renewed will be the southbound Roca line. New trains are expected to arrive from China in March 2015 and will be tested from June 2015 onwards.
The renewal of the Mitre and Roca lines is part of a plan executed by the government after the Once train crash in February 2012, where 51 people died and hundreds were injured. The first one to be refurbished was the westbound Sarmiento line, where the accident happened, which received new Chinese trains that began operating between June and September.
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