Exhibition at Kashmere Gate to mark Delhi Metro operations anniversary

Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had inaugurated the first ever Metro corridor -- spanning 8.2 kilometre from Shahdara to Tis Hazari -- in the national capital on December 24 in 2002

New Delhi: The Delhi Metro on Friday entered its 20th year of operations, marking the occasion with the field trials of the first-ever indigenously developed signalling technology, and launching an exhibition on “Tracing Delhi Metro’s Journey” at Kashmere Gate Metro station.

Officials said the new signalling system -- Indigenous–Automatic Train Supervision technology -- is one of the many significant achievements of DMRC and was jointly developed with Bharat Electronics Limited. (HT Archive)

Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had inaugurated the first ever Metro corridor -- spanning 8.2 kilometre from Shahdara to Tis Hazari -- in the national capital on December 24 in 2002.

Union housing and urban affairs secretary Durga Shanker Mishra inaugurated the exhibition on Friday. “The station has been redeveloped into a full-fledged exhibition with priceless photographs and anecdotes which shall take the visitors on a ride down the memory lane of that historic day which ignited a new revolution in India’s mass transit history. This shall be a permanent exhibition and the passengers using Delhi Metro network’s largest interchange facility shall be able to visit this exhibition without any additional cost,” said Anuj Dayal, executive director, corporate communications, DMRC.

Officials said the new signalling system -- Indigenous–Automatic Train Supervision technology (i-ATS technology) -- is one of the many significant achievements of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) and was jointly developed by the DMRC and Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL)

Explaining the new technology, Dayal said, “The development of the i-ATS system is a major step towards the development of an indigenously built CBTC (Communication-based Train Control) based signalling technology for Metro railway... The i-ATS is a computer-based system, which manages train operations.”

He said that the new system is indispensable for high density operations, such as the Metro, where services are scheduled every few minutes. “i-ATS is an indigenously developed technology, which will now significantly reduce the dependence of Indian Metros on foreign vendors dealing with such technologies…India will become one of the few countries in the world to have its own ATS product which can be implemented in other Metros as well as railway systems,” Dayal said.