Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi on Monday inaugurated India’s first driver-less train on Delhi Metro’s Magenta Line. He also launched the National Common Mobility Card, an inter-operable transport facility that allows users to pay for travel, toll duties, retail shopping, and withdraw money using one card.
“By 2025, metro train services will be expanded to over 25 cities across the country,” said the PM adding that “Make In India” is essential for the expansion.
“The first metro in the country was started with the efforts of Atal Ji. When our government was formed in 2014, only five cities had metro services and today 18 cities have metro rail service. By 2025, we will take this service to more than 25 cities,” he said.
The driver-less trains will be fully automated, eliminating the possibility of human error, officials say. The service will be available on Delhi Metro’s Magenta Line which connects Janakpuri West in West Delhi to Botanical Garden in Noida. This will be extended to Delhi Metro’s Pink Line (Majlis Park-Shiv Vihar) by mid-2021.
It must be noted, however, that India’s first Metro service began operations in 1984 in Kolkata when Indira Gandhi was the country’s Prime Minister.
With these new driver-less train, Delhi Metro Rail Corporation will enter the elite league of 7% of the world’s Metro networks that can operate without drivers, according to an official release.
Driver-less train technology has set standards for automation called grades of automation (GoA). In GoA 1, trains are run by one driver and, in GoA 2 and GoA 3, the role of the driver is reduced to operating doors and for taking over in case of emergencies—the starting and halting of trains is automated. Finally, in the GoA 4, trains are on completely unattended operations mode. DMRC has had driverless technology since 2017, but the agency has been conducting rigorous trials befor launch. The initial launch was set for May 2020, but this had to be postponed because of the Covid-19 lockdown.
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