The Hyderabad Metro Rail (HMR) will have two drivers, one in the front cabin for the onward journey and the other in the back cabin in the reverse direction. Regardless, hold up! Is this not supposed the initial metro rail structure in the country to get the Communication-Based Train Control (CBTC) advancement for all the three corridors?
The metro rail authorities have been talking about the CBTC as far back as the project work started. By then for what reason should there be any loco pilots at all to run the metro trains? Right when this was asked to managing director N.V.S. Reddy, he had a charming answer.
“The L&T Metro Rail Hyderabad (L&TMRH) has implemented the latest innovation available for the metro rail structure through CBTC and this can enable modified get ready control operations, yet for the present, we will not be using the technology to the fullest,” he explained.
Ask why? Evidently, when the innovation was first utilized as a part of the metro rail framework in Europe with no loco pilot on a test premise a couple of years back, travelers froze supposing it was a ‘ghost train’ and endeavored to bounce off it!
Regardless, Mr. Reddy said in a bit of the advanced nations, the CBTC system was being used less all advanced nations and the metro get ready organizations were being continued running without the loco pilots. “What the loco pilots do in our trains is to keep a close watch on the happenings in the trains and at the stations,” he said. They can similarly work the opening and closing of the doors, which are generally done automatically.
The trains would be controlled and monitored from the state-of-the-art Operation Control Center (OCC) at Uppal depot, moreover with a backup centre where the giant display panel would exhibit the trains’ advancement on each one of the paths close by their present ranges.
Picture Courtesy: THE HINDU (Indian Media)
In the unlikely event of the CBTC failure, a fail-safe system has been set up as a secondary train detection system. While the Automatic Train Operation (ATO) is the normal strategy for the operation of trains, the Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system continuously monitors the train and executes the fail-safe commands in an emergency situation, as per L&TMRH officials.
It is informed by the HMR MD, once the passenger would be familiar to ride on a driver-less train, at that time train would start to run without loco pilots.
