Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday inaugurated India's first-ever driverless train operations on Delhi Metro's Magenta Line, along with the fully operational National Common Mobility Card service, and said that India will have the metro service in more than 25 cities by 2025, as against in 18 cities currently.
This driverless train is fully automated which eliminates any possibility of any human errors and will run on the 37-kilometre long Magenta Line from Janakpuri West to Botanical Garden. The driverless services are expected to start on the Magenta Line, the Pink Line of the Delhi Metro by mid of 2021.
"The first metro in the country was started with the efforts of Atal Ji. When our government was formed in 2014, only five cities had metro services and today 18 cities have metro rail service. By 2025, we will take this service to more than 25 cities," the Prime Minister said after virtually inaugurating the driverless metro.
He further said that the country had a metro network of 248 kilometres when his government was formed in 2014, which has tripled today and will expand further to 700 kilometres by 2025. "In 2014, 17 lakh people used to travel by metro. Today, the footfall has increased by five times. This is the evidence of ease-of-living."
A National Common Mobility Card, which will be fully operationalised on the Airport Express Line to enable anyone carrying a RuPay-Debit Card issued from any part of the country to travel on the Airport Express Line using that card. This facility will become available on the entire Delhi Metro network by 2022.
"This shows how India is fast moving towards a smart system. Urbanisation should not be thought of as a challenge but an opportunity, which can be used to have better infrastructure in-country and increase ease-of-living," he added.
Alluding to the erstwhile United Progressive Alliance government, he added, "That time, no one paid heed to the future's requirement, work used to be done half-heartedly and there was a delusion. The result was such that in various parts of the country, a huge gap came in the infrastructure demand and fulfilment."
The Prime Minister said that his government was able to overcome these challenges despite having the same bureaucracy and people. "How did this change come about? We thought of urbanisation, not as a challenge but an opportunity. Earlier, our country did not have any policy regarding the metro. Politicians and governments used to make false promises. Our government made policy and implemented it."
However, a noteworthy point is that India's first Metro service began operations in 1984 in Kolkata when Indira Gandhi was the country's Prime Minister.
Also Read: Stop maligning farmers by calling them 'Urban naxals'& 'other cheap names': Capt. Amarinder to BJP
PM Modi referred today’s launches as ‘next-generation infrastructure for Delhi’, and an attempt of part of his flagship “Make In India” scheme.
PM Modi added, "Make In India is very important for the expansion of Metro services. It reduces cost, savings of foreign currency and provides more employment to Indian people.”