Trains go off radar, services on Metro’s Blue Line affected

Even after an hour, the train had barely moved three stations and stopped for several minutes at each one of the stations.

SWETA SHARMA, commuter

NEWDELHI: Commuters travelling on the Blue Line of Delhi Metro — which is one of the busiest routes — faced a harrowing time on Wednesday, after a ‘rare’ technical snag hit the services of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation. The problem persisted till reports last came in late on Wednesday night.

A senior official of the DMRC said Metro officials at the control room were intermittently losing sight and control of the trains. With trains going off the radar of the Operations Control Centre, services had to be controlled locally and manually. This resulted in bunching and holding up of trains at various stations from around 3pm on Wednesday, the official said.

As the day passed, social networking sites were flooded with posts from passengers who complained that they were held up in the Metro trains for ‘almost an hour’.

Even though technical snags have hit the Blue Line of Delhi Metro in the past too, Wednesday’s snag was rare, officials said. “Such snags don’t happen very frequently,” said a DMRC official.

According to Metro officials, the Blue Line and the Yellow Line are the two busiest routes of the Delhi Metro. The Blue Line connects Dwarka Sector 21 with Vaishali and Noida City Centre.

On Wednesday, trouble started around 3:00pm, when the section between Karol Bagh and Dwarka — a stretch comprising nearly 25 stations — went off the radar. The line was restored partially for sometime around 3:30pm. But the problem continued intermittently till around 4:23pm, when the line was fully restored.

“Between 4:23pm and 7.00pm, services were restored and trains were running with normal frequency,” said a Metro official.

DMRC officials said that just when they thought that they had solved the problem, it resurfaced around 7:00pm and continued till reports last came in.

“Train service on Blue Line is available at a frequency of 5 – 8 minutes due to intermittent signalling issue which resurfaced around 7pm,” the DMRC said in a statement issued around 8 pm.

On a normal day the usual gap between two trains on the Blue Line is 2-3 minutes.

“The information board at Mayur Vihar–i Metro station showed that the next train to Dwarka Sector 21 would come after 57 minutes,” said Ashish Verma, a commuter.

“Even after an hour, the train has barely moved three stations and stopped for several minutes at each one of them,” said Sweta Sharma, a commuter, who boarded the Metro from Rajiv Chowk for Noida.