Snag persists on Blue Line for second day
NEW DELHI: Thursday became the fourth instance this year when Delhi Metro had to cancel more than eight trips in a single day on its Blue Line (Dwarka Sector 21-Vaishali/noida City Centre) because of snags.
Major snags had hit the Blue Line on Wednesday due to which commuters faced several hours of delay in services.
Though the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation ( DMRC) later claimed to have fixed most of the problem in the signalling system of the line, delays continued on Thursday. Officials said that Wednesday and Thursday’s snag was categorised as a ‘major’ fault as more than eight trips had to be cancelled on the line in a day because of it.
On Thursday, the Delhi Metro said, snags were witnessed intermittently from 9am to 11am between Yamuna Bank and Vaishali.
“We had started train services on the entire Blue Line from 10.50am today (Thursday). Services on a major portion of the Blue Line were being run with a frequency of around 4mins and 30secs on automatic mode through Central control, while services from Yamuna Bank to Vaishali was run as an independent loop with a frequency of 5mins and 30secs through local control,” the DMRC said in a statement.
On regular days the frequency of trains on this line is two to three minutes, the Metro official said.
Senior officials said that the signalling team has started rectification work on the system, but the work was still under observation and the original train operation plan will be reintroduced on the entire line once the system is stabilised.
The problem first began around 3pm on Wednesday when the section between Karol Bagh and Dwarka — a section comprising nearly 25 stations — could not be signalled through the local control room. Officials said that issue was partially addressed but the problem continued intermittently till around 4.23pm.
“Between 4:23pm and 7pm, services were restored and trains were running with normal frequency,” said a metro official.
DMRC official had just thought that they had solved the problem when it resurfaced at 7:00 pm and continued till reports last came in. “We will resume regular operations on the line from Friday,” DMRC assured in a statement on Thursday.