The Magenta Line of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), which connects Noida’s Botanical Garden to Janakpuri West in the national capital, has become the country’s first fully unmanned train network.
The DMRC has removed the driver’s cabin from all 29 trains of this line to create more space for the passengers.
“Magenta Line is now completely driverless. We have removed the driver’s cabins from 29 trains, creating more space for passengers. We will remove attendants in phases,” said a DMRC official, as quoted by Times of India.
However, currently, an attendant is present after a gap of every three to four trains. The DMRC plans to remove the attendants in a phased manner.
After the Magenta Line, similar steps will be taken on the Pink Line, which connects Majlis Park in North-West Delhi to Shiv Vihar in North-East Delhi.
The Delhi Metro’s completely automated network is currently around 97 kilometres long and is available on the Magenta and Pink lines. It is India’s only driverless train operation network. Adding to this, train operations will also be driverless in the next corridors covered by DMRC’s Phase-IV expansion.
The driverless train operation facility was first launched in December 2020 on the Botanical Garden- Janakpuri West Magenta Line and extended to the Majlis Park-Shiv Vihar Pink Line in Nov 2021.
DMRC managing director Vikas Kumar earlier told TOI, “With the experience received from these two lines, we will try to implement this in Phase IV as soon as possible. For driverless operations in Phase IV, we took several steps, such as a track monitoring system with cameras installed on the tracks.”
The DMRC said that Driverless trains bring more flexibility into the operations and reduce human interventions and human errors. DMRC will purchase 312 coaches (52 trains) for driverless operations in Phase IV’s priority corridors.
Over 50 per cent of work has been completed on all three lines of the Phase IV corridor i.e. Majlis Park–Maujpur, Aerocity–Tughlakabad (Golden Line), and Janakpuri West–RK Ashram Marg (Magenta Line).
Construction for phase IV expansion of the Delhi Metro began in December 2019 but faced delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic and other permission-related troubles.
Despite these obstacles, Delhi Metro is expected to meet the 2026 deadline.
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