All Delhi Metro lines functional, back to normal timings starting today

DMRC has reopened its final line, the Airport Express Line (Dwarka Sector- 21 to New Delhi), and resumed its regular timings of 6am to 11pm

The Delhi Metro is fully functional, with all its corridors operational at regular, pre-lockdown timings, from Saturday. Flying squad teams of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and Delhi Police will inspect the Metro routinely to ensure commuters do not violate social distancing norms.

Since the reopening of the Metro, passenger movement on all of its corridors is witnessing a steady increase, which also means that DMRC will, from Saturday, face a greater challenge in crowd management. (Representational Photo/HT)

As part of the last leg of the graded resumption, DMRC has reopened its final line, the Airport Express Line (Dwarka Sector- 21 to New Delhi), and resumed its regular timings of 6am to 11pm.

Saturday is the first day since March 22 when Delhi Metro trains are running on the pre-lockdown schedule.

Since the beginning of the week, when the Delhi Metro started reopening its network to commuters in a graded manner, the timings of the service have been limited to two shifts, morning and evening. This was primarily done to acclimatise commuters to the new rules of travel, meant to ensure social distancing.

“The operations are being resumed fully from Saturday, but passengers requested to stagger their journeys so that there are no peak crowding hours,” said Mangu Singh, managing director, DMRC.

Since the reopening of the Metro, passenger movement on all of its corridors is witnessing a steady increase, which also means that DMRC will, from Saturday, face a greater challenge in crowd management.

For this purpose, DMRC said that additional teams have been deployed on the station premises and inside trains to check for violations. Apart from safety protocols regarding screening and sanitising all passengers, doing away with tokens for travel, restricting entry into stations and capping train capacity to 50 passengers, DMRC on Friday also launched a flying squad to keep a watch for any kind of safety violation.

On Friday, the squad counselled over 150 people and fined at least 92 passengers Rs 200 each under the Operations and Management Act (2002) of the Delhi Metro for not wearing masks and following social distancing rules.