NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is going to inaugurate India’s first ever driverless train operations on the Delhi Metro’s Magenta Line (Janakpuri West–Botanical Garden) as well as the fully operational National Common Mobility Card (NCMC) services on the Airport Express Line via videoconferencing on December 28 at 11am.
"With the commencement of driverless trains on the Delhi Metro’s Magenta Line, DMRC will enter the elite league of seven percent of world’s Metro networks which can operate without drivers," a Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) spokesperson said.
After starting driverless services on the 37-kilometre long Magenta Line (Janakpuri West–Botanical Garden), another major corridor of the Delhi Metro, the 59-kilometre long Pink Line (Majlis Park–Shiv Vihar) will also have driverless operations by the mid-2021. After this, Delhi Metro will have a driverless network length of about 95 kilometres, which will be approximately nine percent of the world’s total driverless Metro network.
"The driverless trains will be fully automated which will require minimum human intervention and will eliminate the possibilities of human errors," he said.
The National Common Mobility Card, which will be fully operationalised on the Airport Express Line, will allow anyone carrying a RuPay debit card, issued recently in the last 18 months by 23 banks (all these are NCMC compliant as per directions of the Department of Financial Services, Government of India) from any part of the country, to travel on the Airport Express line using that card. The same facility will become available on the entire Delhi Metro network by 2022, he said.
The Delhi Metro currently operates on a network of about 390 kilometres with 285 stations spanning 11 corridors (including Noida–Greater Noida).