CHENNAI: Southern Railway is looking at technology developers, entrepreneurs and innovators to offer advanced signalling techniques to increase the number of services in the suburban network without compromising on safety.
More than 20lakh commuters use the suburban trains in the city and there is scope to add more services as the number of commuters are also increasing post-pandemic.
The railway ministry has started 'Start-ups for Railways' scheme to rope in start-ups to help improve 'headway' or to augment capacity of a line so that more trains could be operated. Improving headway in the suburban section is one of the many problem areas listed by railways for start-ups to come up with solutions.
A senior railway official said that the idea was to develop a low-cost and reliable system to operate more suburban trains with a high degree of automation.
The start-ups will have to develop a system that includes high resolution train location determination; continuous, high capacity, bi-directional train to wayside data communication; train-borne and wayside processors, automatic train control and other features.
The new system should also be able to work seamlessly with the existing sensor-based automatic train protection system which is being installed on suburban lines.
Railways wants the start-ups to offer solutions for broken rail detection, rail stress monitoring, track inspection, heavy haul freight wagons, on-line condition monitoring system for traction motors of electric locomotives, light-weight wagon for transporting commodities, use of remote sensing,GIS for bridge inspection, analytical tools using digital data for improving passenger services.
