A driver will still be on board: what Kolkata’s driverless Metro actually means for commuters

Passengers boarding Kolkata’s East-West Metro in the coming weeks may notice something unusual: a motorman still sitting in the cabin, even though the train itself is no longer being driven by hand. The Commissioner of Railway Safety (CRS) for the Northeast Frontier circle has approved driverless automatic train operation (ATO) for the line, and officials say a driver will remain on board purely to reassure commuters while the train’s actual movement is controlled from the Operations Control Centre at the maintenance depot in Salt Lake’s Central Park.

The clearance covers the Green Line’s full 16.6-km corridor, including two 520-metre tunnels that run beneath the Hooghly river, making it one of the more technically demanding stretches of driverless rail anywhere in the country. Officials say they are working towards introducing ATO by 15 August, though the exact date has not been locked in.

The approval builds on a driverless trial run on the Sector V-Howrah Maidan corridor on Sunday, overseen by CRS official Sumeet Singhal, with motormen present in the cabin to monitor the test. 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 actually been in use on East-West Metro since February 2020, and it has now been elevated to a considerably more automated stage of operation.

Currently, the Green Line runs on CBTC’s second stage, known as automatic train protection (ATP) mode, which is designed primarily to enforce speed limits and prevent collisions using a mix of onboard and trackside equipment. Once ATO is switched on, that safety layer stays in place while the system also takes over the driving function itself.

In its five-page report, the CRS flagged that Metro Railway should upgrade its rakes, all built by BEML, for uniform operation once driverless services begin. Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation (KMRC) currently has 17 such rakes, of which 12 are already running in revenue service. From Monday, 14 more rakes will run in driverless ATO mode after each day’s commercial services end, as engineers work through the fleet-wide upgrade.

KMRC, which is executing the Rs 10,000-crore project billed as India’s first under-river transportation system, has spent the past year trialling driverless operation with rakes 606 and 603. Having now cleared the ATP test, the corporation may add four more rakes to the fleet as it prepares to expand services and frequencies once ATO formally rolls out.

[Wikimedia Commons/by ArnabSaha]