In an interview with THE WEEK, Puneet Srivastava, MD, Signalling & Infra at Alstom India, expects AI integration will help global railway tech make big leaps towards efficiency, safety, and sustainability.

In an interview with THE WEEK, Puneet Srivastava, MD, Signalling & Infra at Alstom India, expects AI integration will help global railway tech make big leaps towards efficiency, safety, and sustainability.

In an interview with THE WEEK, Puneet Srivastava, MD, Signalling & Infra at Alstom India, expects AI integration will help global railway tech make big leaps towards efficiency, safety, and sustainability.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to completely transform train signalling technology in the future.

Railway signalling is expected to be fully automated going ahead and this will help in adding additional capacity so that more trains can be run. It is also going to lead to better monitoring of train services.

These observations were made by Puneet Srivastava, Managing Director, Signalling & Infra for the India division of French firm Alstom, in an interaction with THE WEEK. He said that more than 35 per cent of complete Communication Based Train Control (CBTC) systems running across the globe had been deployed by Alstom, whose Bengaluru technology centre had played a major role in developing these systems.

“In this system there is a central computer and it knows very well as to how many trains are there, how many signals are there, and what is the route. It ensures complete safety. At Alstom, artificial intelligence and automation are increasingly being integrated into signalling and mobility solutions to enhance safety, optimise traffic management, and improve asset reliability,” remarked Srivastava.

But are driverless trains expected in India soon?

“It is on a trial stage in Delhi and they are going to remove the drivers in the next few months. However it is a decision which has to be taken by the operators. They will remove the driver ... a complete driverless train means the person sitting in the central control room will give a command and the train will run automatically,” added Srivastava.

Srivastava noted that at Alstom, AI and automation were increasingly being integrated into signalling and mobility solutions to enhance safety, optimise traffic management, and improve asset reliability.

“We are leveraging technologies such as Communications-Based Train Control (CBTC), the European Train Control System (ETCS), Automatic Train Protection (ATP), Automatic Train Operation (ATO), predictive maintenance, and digital asset monitoring, (with which) rail operators can achieve greater network capacity, improved punctuality, and enhanced operational efficiency, while minimising service disruptions,” explained Srivastava.

Interestingly, Alstom India is supporting key signalling advancements not only in India, but across the globe.

Alstom has deployed ETCS Hybrid Level 3 signalling solution over an LTE 4G communications network in the Delhi–Meerut RRTS line, making it the world's first deployment of this architecture for a regional rapid transit metro system. The ETCS Level 3 Hybrid solution integrates with Platform Screen Doors (PSDs) based on standard protocols, enhancing passenger safety and ease of movement at the platform.

“For the first time, ETCS Level 3 also incorporates Automation Train Operations (ATO), allowing operators to drive trains with remarkable precision and accuracy. Similarly, we are working on deploying fully automated CBTC signalling systems for the upcoming Bengaluru Metro Phase 2 network. In India, 18 metro lines across cities including Delhi, Kochi, Agra, Kanpur, Mumbai, Bhopal, Indore, Lucknow, Pune, Bangalore, Surat and Jaipur are either operational or under implementation with our signalling solutions,” Srivastava pointed out.

Globally, the Riyadh Metro in Saudi Arabia, which is one of the world's largest driverless metro networks, incorporates Alstom's Urbalis CBTC signalling solution. The system uses continuous wireless communication and moving-block technology to enable safe, high-capacity, and fully automated driverless metro operations.

Similarly, the Sydney Metro in Australia is the country's first fully automated metro system, which also uses Alstom's Urbalis CBTC signalling system, enabling driverless operations and precise train control.

Other interesting global uses of the system include the Singapore Circle Line in Singapore, which is one of Asia's most advanced automated metro networks; the Taipei Circular Line Phase-2, a complex brownfield project in Taiwan; and the Réseau express métropolitain (REM), in Canada's Montreal, which is one of the world's largest automated light metro projects.

Alstom’s signalling team in India has around 4,000 people of which 90 per cent are based out of Bengaluru. They have one small centre in Hyderabad and Gurgaon each, and work on signalling systems in India and abroad.

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