Driverless operations on Delhi Metro’s Pink Line to start on Thursday | Latest News Delhi

The Delhi Metro will see a driverless train run on one of its corridors on Thursday. The inauguration will be done by Union minister for housing and urban affairs, Hardeep Singh Puri and Delhi transport minister Kailash Gahlot on the Pink Line.

According to Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DRMC), the inauguration will take place at 11.30am via video-conferencing.

Currently, only the Magenta Line has trains operating without any manual intervention – in UTO (Unattended Train Operation) mode. The driverless train operations on that route – India’s first – were inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on December 28 last year.

He had said that unlike its predecessors, the present government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has taken growing urbanisation as an opportunity and asserted that metro train services would be extended to 25 cities by 2025 from the current 18.

The Pink Line, which connects Majlis Park to Shiv Vihar was made functional in 2019, a small stretch between Mayur Vihar pocket-1 and Trilokpuri-Sanjay Lake stations was stuck due to land acquisition and rehabilitation issues. That stretch was inaugurated in August this year, making Pink Line the longest single Metro corridor in Delhi, spanning 59 kilometres.

With the operationalisation of the entire Pink Line ‘Ring Corridor’, the total metro network in the national capital reached 390 kilometres with 285 stations. This includes the Noida-Greater Noida Metro Corridor and the Rapid Metro in Gurugram.

The coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic had majorly affected operations of the Delhi Metro.

Delhi Metro had begun its commercial operation on December 25, 2002, a day after the then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had inaugurated DMRC’s first stretch, spanning 8.2 km from Shahdara to Tis Hazari, with just six stations.