Mumbai suburban rail network

CSMT-Panvel corridor

signalling system

local trains

Central Railway’s Main line

The CBTC, to be implemented first on the CSMT-Panvel route, will reduce headway between trains to 150 seconds, thereby allowing railways to increase the number of services.Four years down the line, thecould be operating around 4,500 services every day – it presently operates around 3,000 services a day – when the Communication-Based Train Control System (CBTC) is fully implemented. During a Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation (MRVC) meeting on November 16, the railway top brass identified theto introduce CBTC by 2023, following which it will cover the entire network.The CBTC is a technology that eliminates the signal poles along the tracks, as it enables theto be installed in the trains itself. The technology helps the trains move faster and reduce the headway between two trains. For instance, the current frequency betweenin Mumbai is around four minutes. The CBTC will reduce the time to around two minutes, which will allow the railways to add more services to the network.A railway official said that the present signalling system is outdated and needs to be phased out. “The CBTC is an upgraded version of the technology we use right now. At present, signal systems are fitted in tracks which send signal to the poles. For instance, whenever a train passes, the pole flashes red, yellow, double yellow and green depending on the distance of train on the stretch. With CBTC, the train driver will be able to know the distance of the train ahead of him, which will help him increase or decrease the speed accordingly,” the official said.Like all technologies, the CBTC will not come cheap. It will cost the railways around Rs 6,000 crore to connect the entire Mumbai suburban network to the CBTC, with the(CSMTKalyan) alone costing Rs 2,166 crore. The Western line (Churchgate-Virar) will set the railways back by Rs 2,371 crore. “The target is to appoint consultants by March next year to study the technology,” the official said.The Western Railway’s chief public relations officer, Ravinder Bhakar, confirmed the CBTC was in the process of being implemented. “Once the system is in place, we aim to run the trains with a headway of just 150 seconds,” he said.