Taipei Metro Circular Line EMU

Taipei Metro Circular Line EMU
A Circular line train at Jingan station
The handgrips
In service	2020–present
Manufacturer	Hitachi Rail Italy and Taiwan Rolling Stock Company
Assembly	Hsinchu
Built at	Reggio Calabria, Italy
Family name	Driverless Metro
Constructed	2016–2018
Entered service	31 January 2020
Number built	68 carriages (17 sets)
Number in service	68 carriages (17 sets)
Formation	4-car sets (A–C–D–B)
Fleet numbers	101–117
Capacity	650
Operators	Taipei Rapid Transit Corporation
Depots	North, South
Lines served	Circular line
Specifications
Car body construction	Aluminium
Train length	68.43 m (224 ft 6 in)
Car length	17,455 mm (57 ft 3.2 in) (A/B) 16.76 m (55 ft 0 in) (C/D)
Width	2.65 m (8 ft 8 in)
Height	3.6 m (11 ft 10 in)
Doors	2 × 3 per car
Wheel diameter	710–660 mm (28–26 in) (new–worn)
Wheelbase	2 m (6 ft 7 in)
Maximum speed	90 km/h (56 mph) (design) 80 km/h (50 mph) (service)
Weight	117 t (115 long tons; 129 short tons)
Traction system	Hitachi Rail Italy IGBT–VVVF
Traction motors	16 × Hitachi Rail Italy MTA-A4-85V 102 kW (137 hp) 3-phase AC induction motor
Power output	1,632 kW (2,189 hp)
Acceleration	1.2 m/s2 (3.9 ft/s2)
Deceleration	1 m/s2 (3.3 ft/s2) (service) 1.3 m/s2 (4.3 ft/s2) (emergency)
Electric system(s)	750 V DC third rail
Current collector(s)	Contact shoe
UIC classification	Bo′Bo′+Bo′Bo′+Bo′Bo′+Bo′Bo′
Braking system(s)	Regenerative
Safety system(s)	Moving block CBTC ATC under ATO GoA 4 (UTO), with subsystems of ATP, ATS and CBI Original: Hitachi Rail STS Future upgrade: Alstom Urbalis 400
Coupling system	Scharfenberg
Track gauge	1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) standard gauge

The Taipei Metro Circular Line EMU is a medium-capacity train operating on Taipei Metro's Circular line. A total of 17 4-car trains were manufactured by Hitachi Rail Italy (formerly AnsaldoBreda) in Reggio Calabria, then shipped to Hsinchu for final assembly at Taiwan Rolling Stock Company (TRSC). This is the second time Taiwan has purchased trains made in Italy after Taiwan Railways' EMU300 series, built by Socimi.

This is Taipei Metro's third medium-capacity train, and officially entered service with the opening of the first phase of the Circular line on 31 January 2020.

History

In 2009, the Taipei City Government held a tender for the first phase of the construction of the Circular line, and the bid was awarded to AnsaldoBreda (now Hitachi Rail Italy) for designing and manufacturing the Driverless Metro trains. In August 2016, the AnsaldoBreda factory in Reggio Calabria held a delivery ceremony. In November, it arrived at South Depot for various tests and subsequent integration operations. Dynamic testing started in mid 2017.

Design

There are many differences from the designs and innovations of the existing medium-capacity trains of the Taipei Metro, except that the EMU101 uses the same steel wheels as the high-capacity trains, and the carriages have open-gangway connections. This greatly increases the capacity and the seats are more ergonomically designed. The trains have the external sliding doors of the other lines, instead of the plug doors found on all other trains in the Hitachi Rail Italy Driverless Metro family. Two different liveries of the Circular Line EMU are currently in service. One of these variations is the standard yellow cab and white body design, while the other employs black accents along doors and windows.

Train formation

A complete four-car set consists of an identical twin set of one end car (A or B) and one intermediate car (C or D) permanently coupled together. The configuration of a Circular line train in revenue service is A–C–D–B.

Each carriage is assigned its own three-digit serial number, which ranges from 101 to 117.

• The first digit after the carriage identification letter (A, C, D or B) is always a 1.
• The other two digits are the identification number of the train the car is part of.

References

This article incorporates information from the corresponding articles on the Chinese and Japanese Wikipedia's.