BANGKOK, Jan 26 (TNA) — Airport Rail Link (ARL) plans to establish an affiliated company to manage an integrated mass transit rail system Red Line starting from Taling Chan, passing through Bang Sue to Rangsit with an initial investment of 3 billion baht.
Suthep Phanpheng, managing director of SRT (State Railway of Thailand) Electrified Train Company, operator of ARL, said the State Enterprise Policy Office has recently assigned ARL to take responsibility in managing the Red Line rail system and it hopes that the Transport Ministry to give the green light to ARL to establish a subsidiary firm within this March.
ARL plans to propose the cabinet to consider its initial investment of 3 billion baht and to also transfer SRT’s assets including the procurement of 25 carriages to the firm. Total investment is over 10 billion baht, said Mr Suthep.
The first batch of 52 personnel will be sent to Japan for training on the rail operating and management system this March and April and, eventually, 200 more personnel will be received, he said.
A total of 773 employees will be initially hired to operate the red route mass transit rail system.
Also, the subsidiary firm will be entitled to manage 10 out of 13 stations on commercial-wise which is projected at about 6 per cent of total revenue projected at approximately 1 billion baht in the first year of operation, said Mr Suthep.
ARL has projected that that it would breakeven and start to make profit between 7-10 years after the operational service starts, he said. (TNA)
