The result:

Railway Minister Piyush Goyal

CBTC

Central Railway

Harbour Line

New signaling system will make it possible to operate 300 new services on CR’s main line, over 300 on the Western Line, and over 400 on Harbour and Trans-Harbour lines.The Mumbai divisions of Central and Western railways have proposed a Rs 25,411-crore plan that could see the two lines adding nearly a thousand new locals, reducing overcrowding dramatically.The plan follows a marathon meeting on crowd control chaired byin Mumbai on the intervening night of Monday and Tuesday. The meeting, in which Goyal pushed his officers to come up with big ideas that will translate into visible change, went up to 3 am.The plan mainly involves installing the state-of-the-art Communications-based Train Control () signaling system that will reduce the headway time – the gap between two trains – by half, making it possible to operate nearly 300 new services on the’s main line, over 300 new services on the Western Line and over 400 on Central Railway’s Harbour and Trans-Harbour lines.A note put up on the India Railway’s website says that once overcrowding is dealt with with the introduction of new services, it will then become possible to run trains with doors shut thus making them safer than they are now.Currently the headway time between two locals on the Western Line is 3.5 minutes to 4 minutes. With the introduction of CBTC signaling system it can be brought down to 2 to 2.5 minutes. Similarly, the headway time on Central (main) andcan also be brought down to 2 to 2.5 minutes from the current 4 and 6 minutes respectively.Mumbai’s suburban section currently uses a rather outdated signaling system called Fixed Block Signaling system. As the trains move from one signaling block to the next, the previous block shows red signal and those behind it a yellow, or green. This separation of distance prevents trains from running at full potential, restricting the number of services.CBTC is a signaling system that makes use of the telecommunications between the train and track equipment.CBTC makes it possible to determine the exact position of a train more accurately than the traditional signaling systems. This results in a more efficient and safe way to manage traffic and improve headways.