17 rakes, 1 river tunnel: the numbers behind Kolkata’s driverless Metro rollout

Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation (KMRC) currently runs 17 rakes on its East-West Metro, all manufactured by BEML, and 12 of them are already in daily revenue service. That number is about to shift, after the Commissioner of Railway Safety (CRS) for the Northeast Frontier circle approved driverless automatic train operation (ATO) across the line’s full 16.6-km corridor, including two 520-metre tunnels running beneath the Hooghly river.

From Monday, 14 of those rakes will begin operating in driverless ATO mode once each day’s commercial services wrap up, as engineers work through a fleet-wide upgrade process. KMRC has spent the past year trialling driverless running with two specific rakes, numbered 606 and 603, and having now cleared the automatic train protection (ATP) test, the corporation may add four more rakes to the network as it scales up.

The approval follows a successful driverless test on the Sector V-Howrah Maidan corridor on Sunday, supervised by CRS official Sumeet Singhal, with motormen present in the cabin to oversee the run. Separately, approval for communication-based train control (CBTC) on both the Howrah-bound and Salt Lake-bound lines came through on Monday. CBTC signalling has been in use on East-West Metro since February 2020 and has now been upgraded to a considerably more automated stage.

In a five-page observation report, the CRS said Metro Railway should standardise its BEML-built rakes for uniform operation, a step seen as necessary to support consistent revenue generation once driverless services expand. Officials are aiming to introduce ATO by 15 August, though the date has not been confirmed.

Even once driverless operation begins, a driver will remain on board each train, largely to reassure passengers, while the actual movement is controlled from the Operations Control Centre at the maintenance depot in Salt Lake’s Central Park. The Green Line currently runs on CBTC’s second stage, known as ATP mode, which enforces speed limits and prevents collisions using a mix of onboard and trackside equipment.

KMRC is implementing the Rs 10,000-crore East-West Metro project, which it describes as India’s first under-river transportation system. The driverless clearance is expected to let the network add more services and increase frequencies across the corridor in the months ahead.

[Wikimedia Commons/by ArnabSaha]