As the Delhi Metro begins its 20^th year of operations today, the field trial of the first ever indigenously developed i-ATS technology (Indigenous – Automatic Train Supervision) for Delhi Metro’s Red Line (Shaheed Sthal – Rithala) was inaugurated by Durga Shanker Mishra, Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India and Chairman, DMRC via video conferencing.

On this occasion, Mishra also inaugurated an exhibition-themed ‘Tracing Delhi Metro’s Journey’ which has been developed at the Kashmere Gate Metro station. The location from where, the then Prime Minister, Shri Atal Vihari Vajpayee had inaugurated the first-ever Metro corridor in the national capital on this day in 2002 has been redeveloped into a full-fledged exhibition with priceless photographs and anecdotes which shall take the visitors to 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.

Dr.Mangu Singh, Managing Director, DMRC, Ms. Anandi Ramalingam, CMD, Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and other senior officials were also present during this ceremony.

This i-ATS technology has been jointly developed by DMRC and BEL and is now being implemented on the Red Line. With this achievement, 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.

The development of the i-ATS system is a major step towards the development of an indigenously built CBTC (Communication Based Train Control) based signaling technology for Metro railway since the i-ATS is an important subsystem of the CBTC Signalling system. ATS is a computer-based system, which manages train operations.

This 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.

Technology systems such as the CBTC are primarily controlled by European countries and Japan. As part of the ‘Make in India’ initiative of the Government of India, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) had decided to indigenize the CBTC technology. Along with DMRC, Niti Aayog, MoHUA, Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), RDSO and CDAC are part of this development. To take the project forward, DMRC and BEL had entered into an MoU last year. A dedicated team of DMRC and BEL, Ghaziabad worked together round the clock to take this important step towards ‘AtmaNirbhar Bharat’.

The i-ATS system shall also be used in the upcoming Phase 4 corridors.  Predictive Maintenance modules shall also be introduced in the Phase 4 corridors using the i-ATS system.