New Delhi: Indian Railways has envisaged an investment of about ₹55,000 crore over next five years on multiple signaling technologies to enhance safety and security of passengers during train travel.
Expanding the railway network capacity through signalling modernisation will do away with the need to lay new tracks by acquiring land.
The modernisation will be in the areas of Long Term Evolution (LTE), Optical Fibre System, Train Collision Avoidance System (TCAS), Automatic Block Signalling (ABS), Electronic Interlocking (EI) and Centralised Traffic Control.
What cabinet nod for Railway’s Rs 55,000 crore project means
Earlier on June 9, the Union Cabinet had allocated 5 MHz spectrum in 700 MHz band for the Railways which will be used for providing LTE based mobile train radio communication and advanced radio network on its route.
The Cabinet had also approved the TCAS to make rail travel safer and faster, envisaging a spend of Rs 25,000 crore for these two projects. With an expanded modernisation plan, the cost of the projects is estimated to be Rs 56,955 crore.
4G spectrum to avoid train collisions by human error
A switch to 4G is expected to enable real-time and faster operation of communication systems of the carrier. It will boost bandwidth and other technical parameters such as peak capacity.
The railways plans to invest around ₹55,000 crore for this modernisation of signalling and telecommunication.
It plans to use the spectrum allocation to provide long-term evolution (LTE) based mobile train radio communication for seamless communication between its running staff, the traffic controller, and maintenance personnel to enhance safety and security.
‘Make in India’ firms vying for contract
Preference for Make in India and potentially low-cost equipment have tilted the scales in favour of Indian companies such as Medha Servo Drives, Kernex Micro Systems, HBL Power Systems over global counterparts in signalling space, BusinessLine reported.
“So far, Indian Railways was dependent on foreign technology….. It has been decided to adopt TCAS as national Automatic Train Protection System of India under Atmanirbhar Bharat Vision of Prime Minister,” Sanjeev Mittal, Member-Infrastructure, Railway Board, said in a virtual press meet.
“There is a technical committee that will select the best features globally that can be adopted for TCAS,” he said.
