India’s first driverless train on Delhi Metro’s Magenta Line was inaugurated by Prime Minister Modi. 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.
The driverless 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.
“The inauguration of the first driverless metro train shows how fast India is moving towards smart systems,” Prime Minister Modi said inaugurating the ground-breaking project today during a virtual function. “The first Metro in Delhi was started with the efforts of Atal (Bihari Vajpayee) ji. When our govt 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.”
Prime Minister Modi also said that in 2014, only 248 kilometres of Metro lines were operational in the country, while today it was about three times more than; by 2025, he said, the government was trying to expand it to 1700 kilometres.
With these new trains, Delhi Metro Rail Corporation will enter the elite league of 7 per cent of the world’s Metro networks that can operate without drivers, according to an official release.
