India's first-ever driverless train on Delhi Metro's Magenta Line flagged off!

New Delhi, December 28: Lauds and Applauds to a major technological feat that will herald a new era of travelling comfort and enhanced mobility! Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday flagged off the country’s first-ever fully-automated driverless train operations on the Magenta Line of the Delhi Metro via video conferencing. After the start of driverless services on the 37-km Magenta Line (Janakpuri West–Botanical Garden), another major corridor of the Delhi Metro, 57-km Pink Line (Majlis Park–Shiv Vihar) is expected to have driverless operations by the mid of 2021.

 

With the commencement of these new-generation trains, the DMRC will enter the elite league of seven per cent of the world's Metro networks which can operate services without drivers, the Delhi Metro said in a statement on Sunday. The commercial operation of these trains will begin later the same day, after the event, a senior Delhi Metro official noted.

 

 

'Driverless trains a major technological milestone for DMRC. The driverless trains will be fully automated which will require minimum human intervention and will eliminate the possibilities of human errors. Delhi Metro has been a pioneer in introducing technology-driven solutions for passenger comfort and this is another step in the same direction," the statement added.

 

Once the driverless trains are operationalised on the Pink Link too, the Delhi Metro will have a driverless network length of about 94 km which will be approximately nine percent of the world’s total driverless metro network, it added.

 

This is the first major event of Delhi Metro this year which resumed services from September 7 after remaining closed for over five months due to coronavirus-induced nationwide lockdown. The new-generation trains driven by cutting-edge technology will be a major technological milestone for the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation and the country.

 

 

The driverless train having six coaches is equipped with several advanced features. Initially, drivers will be deputed for operating the trains but they would be gradually withdrawn to move to Unattended Train Operation (UTO). The metro rail scenario in the entire nation has undergone a massive transformation in the last six years. While in 2014, only 248 km of metro lines were operational in five cities, presently 702 km are operational in 18 cities in India, the DMRC statement said.

 

"In the days to come, over a thousand kilometres of new lines shall be added and about 27 cities in the country will have metro connectivity. By 2022, when the nation celebrates its 75th Independence Day, India will have a combined metro network of over a thousand kilometre which will carry more than a crore passengers every day," it added