Rats! Rodents gnaw into Metro's service record
Metro's long list of problems at Rajiv Chowk station - technical glitches, cable theft, women's safety and huge passenger pressure - has a new addition. The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation now has to battle rat infestation.
Metro's long list of problems at Rajiv Chowk station - technical glitches, cable theft, women's safety and huge passenger pressure - has a new addition. The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation now has to battle rat infestation.
DMRC's line 6 (Central Secretariat to Badarpur) that was opened partially on October 3 faced on Thursday morning its first technical snag after the inaugural day trouble.
"On the tracks near Jasola Metro station, rats had cut a low-voltage cable and hampered service. On that stretch we had to run trains at a low speed till we could fix the problem," said DMRC's director (operations) Rajkumar.
Seelampur is another station with rodent trouble, he said.
"Rats can even damage high-voltage cables and cause service disruption," said a senior officer of DMRC.
He, however, said the DMRC has installed pest-control devices to get rid of this peculiar problem.
"Cases of cable thefts have already caused Metro service disruption several times. Now rats are adding insult to injury," said another DMRC officer.
Meanwhile, to ease passenger pressure at Rajiv Chowk Metro station during evening peak hours, the DMRC started running empty trains.
"As a special measure to decongest Rajiv Chowk, we have started running empty trains from Central Secretariat between 7pm and 8pm.
Four or five train are run empty to Rajiv Chowk daily so that the office hour rush at Rajiv Chowk can be effectively cleared," said Rajkumar.
He also said more and more trains are being converted to Automatic Train Operation (ATO) mode, where trains run automatically without a driver, to increase efficiency of trains on Line 2 (Huda City Centre to Jahangirpuri).
Currently, the trains run on Automatic Train Protection mode, which is a safety system that ensures trains remain at a safe distance from each other.
It also gives sufficient warning to drivers so that they can stop without colliding with another train.