CAPITAL LIFE PARTIALLY BACK ON THE TRACK
As service resumes, here’s how DMRC is running a sanitized show
Commuters in a metro train after Delhi Metro resumed services with curtailed operation of the Yellow Line and Rapid Metro, in New Delhi, on Monday
At the outset, it appears as though one is about to enter a crime scene. So heavy is the police deployment, presumably to control the anticipated crowd at the entrance gate itself. It is 8.30 in the morning at the Rohini Sector 18-19 Metro station. On an ordinary day, this would be rush hour and one would be racing with the crowd to board the train. But these aren’t ordinary times. And though the Delhi Metro service has resumed after 169 days today, with the aim to bring back some semblance of normalcy to life, the crowds are missing.
On Day 1, only the yellow line (between Samaypur Badli and HUDA City Centre) is operational. It is one of the busiest routes, on which fall the usually choc-a-bloc Vishwavidyalaya and Kashmere Gate stations. But inside the Rohini station, there are just a handful of passengers, each of whom is required to go through a temperature check before proceeding to a counter to get their bags sanitized. Only then are the bags allowed to pass through the scanning machine.
Tokens are not permitted for now. Only smart card holders are allowed to use the services, buying the cards or recharging them through cashless — and thereby contactless — modes.
The pre-boarding security check, meanwhile, is as intense as it was in the elusive pre-covid days. Only, now it is all contactless. Gone is the physical frisking by personnel of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), which is tasked with Delhi Metro security. Passengers are instead directed to a sanitizer booth and then frisked from a distance with a metal detector by a CISF personnel in a mask and face shield.
The usually packed coaches are eerily empty, with barely a dozen passengers in each — all of them safely masked, and some with gloves and face shields also on. Inside the train, every alternate seat is marked with stickers that read: “Don’t sit here. Maintain social distancing.” To ensure that these warnings don’t go unheeded, security staff patrol the coaches, keeping an eye on passengers. Outside the coaches, at the stations, though, there is no such demarcation for passengers waiting for their Metro to arrive.
Meanwhile, those who came expecting respite from the muggy outdoors and hoping for a cool, comfortable Metro ride, would have been disappointed. The coaches are now warmer than usual. The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has regulated the temperature to allow better air circulation amid reports that the virus spreads faster in enclosed airconditioned spaces.
The average travel time, too, has increased by 20-25 minutes because of longer stoppages. On a normal day, it takes around 35 minutes to reach Rajiv Chowk from Rohini Sector 18-19 Metro station. Today, it took a little over an hour.
Like the other stations, the excessively busy Rajiv Chowk is also practically deserted. “We are on duty since 6 am. There are hardly any passengers, but we hope the numbers will increase in the days to come,” says Hemant Kumar Singh, who is part of the DMRC security.
The few who have come are relieved that service has resumed. Among them is Sahil Singh, 24, who works for an event management firm in Gurugram and lives in Rohini in north Delhi, a distance of over 45 km. “My work does not allow me to function from home,” he says. “Besides, we faced salary cuts when the lockdown began and last month, we weren’t paid at all. We have to go out and get business, and cabs are very expensive.
Madhuri Singh, 23, who works at Connaught Place and has been travelling in Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) bus through this period, agrees. “I used to change three buses from my house to reach office. It would take me over two hours. And by the time I got back home, I would be dead tired,” she says.
Like Singh, 70-year old Narendra Kukreja is also thankful that he no longer has to bus it between his home in Narela in outer Delhi and the Karkardooma Court, where he is a lawyer.
There are also those who’ve been asked to report back to work since the Metro is now up and running. “I was working from home all this while, but now our office has asked us to rejoin,” says Kavita Goyal, who works with a private firm in Connaught Place.
While only the Yellow Line is back on track, from September 12 full services will resume. When DMRC had halted services on March 22, its daily average ridership was 6 million. Today, according to official figures, in the first four hours of the service being resumed, 7,500 passengers travelled by the Metro.
Meanwhile, outside the Rajiv Gandhi Metro station, police deployment is as heavy as at Rohini. Anxious auto-rickshaw drivers wait, hoping to catch a passenger. Today, however, there aren’t very many. But tomorrow is another day.