Kolkata: If all goes well, the city’s first driverless metro rake may zip with passengers under the Hooghly within a month, sources said. A driver will remain on board the rake to reassure commuters, but its movement will be controlled from Operations Control Centre at the maintenance depot in Salt Lake Central Park.The commissioner of railway safety (CRS), Northeast Frontier circle, has given its nod to Metro Railway to commission the driverless automatic train operation (ATO) along the 16.6-km corridor of Green Line, or East-West Metro, which includes two 520m-long tunnels under the river.“We are trying to introduce the ATO mode by Aug 15. No date has been finalised yet,” an official said.The Sector V-Howrah Maidan corridor successfully underwent a driverless test under the watchful eyes of CRS Sumeet Singhal on Sunday. Drivers, or motormen, were present in the cabin to oversee the trip. Approval for communication-based train control (CBTC) — the technology that enables driverless operations — on both the Howrah-bound and Salt Lake-bound lines came on Monday.East-West Metro has been using the CBTC signalling technology since Feb 2020. It has now been upgraded to a heavily automated stage.The CRS has mentioned in its five-page observation that Metro Railway should upgrade its rakes — all manufactured by BEML — for uniform operation and revenue generation. Currently, Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation (KMRC), implementing agency of the Rs 10,000-crore East-West Metro project, which is India’s first under-river transportation system, has 17 rakes manufactured by BEML.Twelve of them have been inducted into revenue operations. The driverless ATO mode will allow the authorities to add more services and increase frequencies. Sources said KMRC may add four more rakes, now that it has passed the ATP test. For the past year, KMRC has been carrying out driverless trials with BEML rakes 606 and 603.Sources said that from Monday, 14 more rakes will operate in the driverless ATO mode once the day’s commercial services end, as part of the process to upgrade them for driverless operations.Green Line now runs on CBTC’s second stage, or the automatic train protection (ATP) mode. It is primarily designed to ensure safety by enforcing speed limits and preventing collisions. The system relies on a combination of onboard and wayside equipment to monitor train movement and enforce safety parameters. The driver plays an important role in the present system.
