India’s First Driverless Metro to be inaugurated 

India’s First Driverless Metro to be inaugurated 

Part of: GS Prelims and GS-III – Infrastructure

In news 

• Indian Prime Minister is scheduled to flag off the country’s first ‘driverless’ metro in Delhi on December 28.
• It will mark a milestone in India’s urban mass rapid Transit. 

Key takeaways 

• The first ‘driverless’ train will roll out on Magenta Line of the Delhi Metro. 
• Delhi metro is a network spread across the national capital and adjoining cities such as Noida, Gurugram, Faridabad, Ghaziabad and Bahadurgarh.
• The Centre has also notified changes in the Metro Railways General Rules, 2020 as the previous norms did not allow driverless services.
• The trials of DMRC’s new ‘driverless trains’ were started in December 2017 where the automation of the new metro trains, that were equipped with Unattended Train Operations (UTO) and CBTC (Communication Based Train Control) signalling systems were tested .

• The driverless train operation (DTO) will only be applicable for Line 7 and Line 8 of the DMRC network which comes under the Phase III expansion.
• These corridors are equipped with an advanced signalling technology which makes the transition possible.