Driverless Monorail is an upgrade away, but not on cards: MMRDA

While a futuristic Monorail system with driverless train cars — like the ones in Dubai, Thailand and China — is only an upgrade away, it is not on the cards anytime soon, claim Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) officials.

Right now, the authority wants to focus on troubleshooting issues to keep the project from becoming a boondoggle. Citing the fact that it needs to focus on primary issues pertaining to operation of the existing nine trains of which only four are operational and the remaining ones require repairs, the officials claimed that upgradation to driverless monorail is not likely as of now. The authority has plans to buy new Monorail coaches to increase its frequency.

Ever since the operations of Mumbai Monorail started in February 2014, there have been issues with the coaches of Monorail that were manufactured in Malaysia by Scomi Engineering.

After Scomi’s termination in December 2018, the MMRDA has now also rolled on to procure more at least five Monorail trains from other international companies and have floated bids for the same.

However, MMRDA officials informed that the focus is not of having driverless Monorail trains for now but to have more trains so that the frequency from the current 22 minutes can be brought down to 5 minutes in the next two years.

An MMRDA official said, “Currently, driverless Monorail trains are chugging in many countries around the world, but we are not toying with the idea as of now. In future if we want to have driverless trains, it will just be a matter of technological upgradation.”

Meanwhile, the authority is considering to make Mumbai Metro ‘driverless’, like the one in Delhi.

At present, in order to make the travel easier for commuters, MMRDA also plans to introduce a mobile application for mobile ticketing, providing timetable and other information related to Monorail, informed MMRDA officials