NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said that metro train services would be extended to 25 cities with an over 1,700-km network by 2025 in the country as he flagged off India’s first-ever driverless train operations on the Delhi Metro’s Magenta Line.
Modi noted that metro service was confined to only five cities in 2014, when his government came to power at the Centre, and said it had continuously been expanded to different cities, a testimony of people’s “ease of living” being ensured by his dispensation.
He said that the central government did not see urbanisation as a challenge but used this as an opportunity and took a swipe at earlier governments, saying they did not address the infrastructure demands of growing cities for decades.
Modi said that with the driverless metro trains, India had become one of the few countries in the world, where such service is available.
He also said that the government had worked to unify services to help people, referring to measures like GST, FAStag cards, agriculture market, and one nation, one ration card.
“In 2014, only 248 kilometres of metro lines were operational in the country. Today it is about three times more with more than seven hundred kilometres. We are trying to expand it to 25 cities with 1,700 kilometre network,” he said.
Modi also inaugurated India’s first-ever driverless train operations on Delhi Metro’s Magenta Line along with the fully operational National Common Mobility Card service on the Airport Express Line via video-conferencing.
The driverless trains will be fully automated, which will eliminate the possibility of human error, the government has said, adding that after the start of driverless services on the Magenta Line (Janakpuri West-Botanical Garden), the Pink Line (Majlis Park-Shiv Vihar) of Delhi Metro is expected to have driverless operations by mid-2021.
The Prime Minister’s Office has said that these innovations would herald a new era of travelling comfort and enhanced mobility.
The National Common Mobility Card, which will be fully operationalised on the Airport Express Line, will enable anyone carrying a RuPay-Debit Card issued from any part of the country to travel on the route using it.