India’s first semi-high speed Regional Rail service ‘Namo Bharat’ has received an enthusiastic response from commuters across the spectrum. The train was flagged off on October 20 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to provide a faster, safer and reliable efficient urban transit system. With its launch, the country’s railway sector has achieved another milestone. The 17-kms-long Priority Section of Delhi-Meerut RRTS Corridor marks the world debut of the Level 3 ETCS.
The train has been designed by Alstom India at its engineering center in Hyderabad and manufactured at Gujarat’s Savli. In the last two years, more than 300 engineers and designers of Alstom India have devoted thousands of safe man hours, ran hundreds of hours of tests to deliver the phase-I commitments to National Capital Region Transport Corporation (NCRTC).
What is Level 3 ETCS?
The ETCS stands for European Train Control System. It aims at facilitating safety, interoperability, reduction in wait time and enabling efficiency. The ETCS is equipped with Automatic Train Operation (ATO) over Long Term Evolution (LTE) in the future to further increase in network performance and capacity.
In a statement, Olivier Loison, Managing Director, Alstom India said, “This project also marks the world premiere of several new Signaling technologies which will set new benchmarks in the rail space globally. All of this is set to make Sustainable Mobility at scale real in India. These Made in India trains reflect our robust capabilities, and we are truly humbled to be contributing to India’s rail-based infrastructure growth.”
Features of ETCS signaling system:-
- A key feature of the ETCS technology being introduced in RRTS is interoperability, which facilitates seamless commuter movement across the corridors, without the hassle of changing the trains for passengers.
- ETCS signaling system will not only facilitate interoperability but will also allow to optimize the usage of existing infrastructure, thus reducing the waiting time for passengers.
- This signaling system provides a high level of safety for trains running at close headway of 180 seconds by virtual block implementation (hybrid level 3) to ensure continuous and safe separation and eliminates accidents due to human error.
- This service also comes with Automatic Train Protection (ATP), Traffic Management System (TMS), Platform Screen Door (PSD) sub-systems using Long Term Evolution (LTE) communication between track side and train.