Multi-million dollar companies met with city railway officials to introduce the technology of advanced signalling system on Wednesday, but the proposal has raised questions, as it will require an investment of Rs 6, 500 crore and Metro type rakes.
The meeting, which was held at Marine Drive’s Trident Hotel, saw representatives from big-wigs of the rail industry like Bombardier, Seimens, Hitachi and Alstom. They also came up with the proposal of using ‘cab signalling’, a system that optimises the use of time between services through a software and is completely automatic.
This system will ensure that the services are run on the intervals of two-minutes, with the Harbour line likely to be the first one on which the system would be experimented upon, said the representatives. “The Harbour Line has been chosen as the mainline on the Central Railway is a more complicated network and sees the heaviest traffic than any other railway line including the Western Railway,” said an official on the condition of anonymity.
Although the proposal on Harbour has not been officially approved by the Railway Ministry, railway officials have said that the new signalling system will not only come with the cost of the system itself but also the maintenance and rolling stock.
“We cannot put in the new signalling system and retain the rest of the old infrastructure. We will have to bring in Metro type rake and keep the old system of signalling on standby in case the new one fails,” added the official. However, an MRVC official present at the event said that nothing was finalised yet.
