Metro commuters had a harrowing time on Tuesday morning as services were badly hit on the Dwarka-Noida City Centre/Vaishali line (Blue Line) as a portion of the Over Head Electricity (OHE) wire of the track going towards Dwarka snapped between Janakpuri West and Uttam Nagar East stations.
While metro officials said train services were mainly affected for nearly one-and-a-half hour from 8-24 a.m. to 9-47 a.m., commuters said services remained affected for almost three hours.
Siddhartha Sharma, a student of Aurobindo College in Malviya Nagar, said: “I boarded the train from Dwarka Sector-13. The train stood at two stations for nearly 15 minutes. Metro officials then asked the passengers to vacate the train and the next train came almost an hour later. I usually reach college in an hour-and-half, but today it took me more than three hours to do the same.”
Supriya, a student of Indraprastha College at Civil Lines, too said she reached college after 11 a.m. She had boarded a train from Kaushambi around 8-30 a.m.
Even as four specialised teams comprising five to six members each went to the site to ensure immediate repair/maintenance work of the affected OHE portion, metro officials said services from Jankpuri West to Noida City Centre/Vaishali Metro station were provided by running trains on a short loop on this section.
To carry passengers from Janakpuri West to Dwarka side, single line operation was also undertaken between the Janakpuri West and Dwarka section.
With technical error in OHE on the line becoming a regular phenomenon, Delhi Metro managing director Mangu Singh has asked officials to conduct an audit into the different types of electrical failures on Line-3 so that the pattern can be studied with the intention of finding technical methods to minimise the occurrence of such incidents, officials added.
The audit will be conducted by a technical expert of the DMRC electrical department.
