An Indian Railways engineer, Ashwani Kumar Upadhyaya, recently received an award for his revolutionary and innovative idea of “Caterpillar Train” from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Centre for Collective Intelligence. Ashwani Kumar Upadhyaya won the MIT Climate CoLab competition with his unique innovative idea of elevated “Caterpillar Train” that indicates at a new era for mass transit. Mr. Upadhyaya’s revolutionary idea can be an answer for decade’s long question of how to integrate effective mass transportation in urban areas.
Ashwani Kumar is a 1997-batch officer of the Indian Railway Traffic Service and is posted at the Centre for Railway Information Systems in New Delhi. At present, he is on academic leave and doing Ph. D in Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston. His caterpillar train transit is about a network of lightweight, elevated train coaches that will run at speeds up to 100 km/hr. As the train is having wheels both above and below the coaches, that’s why it will be able to run on the tracks as well as hang from them. Caterpillar train system works on electricity and it is also having a backup battery for emergencies.
While interacting with the Indian Express Ashwani said that “Currently, all urban mass transit systems are developed on the hub-and-spoke concept — the transport system is the hub and users have to travel from various parts of the city and converge there to use it. But the C-Train goes wherever there is at least a five-metre road”.