Kolkata likely to have driverless metro trains soon!

Indian Railways has announced that soon Kolkata will have driverless metro trains in the city, giving city metros a new face.

"There is a target that all the new metro rakes in the city from March 2018 would be grade of automation 3 (GoA 3) driverless rakes," said Yatish Kumar, Director, Research Design and Standards Organisations, Indian Railways.
Grade automation (GoA 3) means the trains will move automatically, but the attendant would be there to open and shut the metro doors. Such grade automated trains are already been running on Chennai, Bangalore and Lucknow routes.

As per the plans, the rakes could be imported from China and will be for the existing metro routes, including the new East-West and Dum Dum-Garia metro sections.

Also, the government has plans to introduce the GoA 4 trains, where even door operations are automated; one such train is already running on a trial basis as of now, Kumar said on the sidelines of the CII-organised Manufacturing Excellence conference.