Prashant Rao, Executive Director, Signal, Telecommunications and IT, DMRC
Enterprises in the transportation industry are increasingly turning to information technology (IT) solutions to bring in efficiency in their operations. These solutions have enabled them to meet signalling requirements, maintain passenger records and track vehicles on a real-time basis. Officials from leading enterprises in this space discuss their IT strategies, deployment challenges and future plans…
What role are IT and telecom solutions playing in the transportation industry? How are enterprises in the sector undertaking digitalisation?
As metro rail systems have to run trains at a high frequency while ensuring safety, conventional railway signalling and train control systems cannot be used in a metro environment. Metro rail transportation systems require a high level of automation in the train control, internal telecommunications, building management and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. In addition, digitalisation is required for the ticketing and passenger information dissemination systems (public announcement and train arrival/ departure display).
What are some of the IT, telecom, enterprise and mobility solutions used by your organisation? How have they helped in enhancing business performance and efficiency?
The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has been using the most modern train control, telecommunication, ticketing and power SCADA systems since its inception. It was the first metro rail system to introduce automatic train operations in the field of train control wherein the dependence on the driver is very limited. As far as telecommunications is concerned, DMRC introduced the digital train radio based on terrestrial trunk radio (TETRA) technology to ensure efficient spectrum utilisation and higher availability of radio communication signals between trains and stations. In terms of security and surveillance, DMRC has been operating a network of more than 10,000 cameras to ensure a secure environment on the metro premises. Besides, in the field of ticketing, DMRC has introduced a contactless ticketing system wherein passengers can load money with their smart cards and swipe it through automatic ticketing gates at the stations. The system works using a highly automated network of computer-based ticketing gates with inbuilt intelligence to deduct the correct fare automatically. IT-based systems are also being used for power supervision and control of high and low voltage supply for running the trains and undertaking auxiliary functions at metro stations.
What are the challenges faced in managing IT and telecom infrastructure, and deploying new technologies?
As most of the technologies deployed by DMRC were being introduced in the country for the first time, the organisation had to undergo a lot of internal skill development and study a number of metro systems across the world. After the deployment of these technologies, the major challenge has been to limit the dependence on foreign original equipment manufacturers and to have more in-house maintenance and upgradation capabilities.
What is the scope of big data analytics, cloud and IoT technologies in the transportation industry? Is your company using/planning to use any of these technologies?
The adoption of these technologies in the metro transport industry is at a nascent stage. Most of the metro rail systems are safety critical by design and require a secure internal network. Therefore, these systems are yet to fully adopt cloud/IoT technologies. However, metros are moving towards cloud-based solutions for internal document management. There is growing awareness about cloud-based solutions for operations like ticketing and passenger information, as well as to avail of the benefits of cost and interoperability.
What are the key IT and telecom trends that the transportation industry is likely to witness going forward?
Over the past 15 years, almost all the systems being used in metro rails have moved to total internet protocol (IP)-based solutions. To this end, DMRC has taken a step further and will be introducing driverless trains on the new lines being constructed. Meanwhile, an emerging trend in the field of ticketing is the open loop ticketing system, which supports payment methods such as Europay, Mastercard, Visa and RuPay.
