Snag hits Delhi Metro, commuters left stranded
Services of the Delhi Metro were badly hit on Friday evening peak hours following a major technical snag in its signaling system near Yamuna Bank interchange station.
Hundreds of commuters, including women and elderly, were stuck in a Dwarka-bound Metro train at the Yamuna Bank station for almost an hour around 6pm on Friday following a major technical snag.
The evening rush hour and a packed train added to their woes; women and children panicked and some elderly people fell sick because the air-conditioning had stopped working.
A 40-year-old man named Rohit Jha fainted inside the train. Some people inside the train cried out for help and wanted the doors to be opened so that they could come out of the suffocating coaches. But nothing happened.
“There was no clarity about the snag; all we heard was the pre-recorded announcement — ‘There will be short delay in the service’,” said Sudarshan Singh, a commuter.
“It took an hour to reach Barakhamba Metro station from Mayur Vihar Phase 1,” he said.
While the train was stuck at Yamuna Bank, the Metro services on the busiest Dwarka-Noida/Vaishali line was disrupted, leading to bunching of trains during evening peak hours. Normalcy on the line could be restored only a few minutes before 7pm.
Calling it a rare technical snag, a Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) official said, “The signalling system near the Yamuna Bank interchange station failed to set directions for trains coming from Dwarka. As a result, several trains remained stranded on the line as the staff tried to set the directions manually.”
During this period, trains were run in loops from Indraprastha to Dwarka. A number of trains from Dwarka to Noida and Vaishali were suspended at Indraprastha metro station, leading to massive inconvenience.
On August 20, Delhi Metro services were badly hit on the Dwarka-Noida line due to technical problems.
The ongoing repair work at the Noida City Centre Station, where a fault was recently detected in the cantilever arms, is also causing massive inconvenience to commuters on the busy line for the past one month.
