In less than two months, the Delhi Metro has witnessed five major technical snags and incidentally, the Blue line (Dwarka Sector 21- Vaishali/Noida City Centre) has been the victim each time. Sources said the peak hour frequency of Metro on this line has exerted a lot of pressure on its overall synchronisation, resulting in the incessant snags.
Trains on line 3 (Blue line) run at an interval of two minutes 30 seconds during the peak hours (8 am to 11 am and 5 pm to 8 pm). Gauging the massive ridership, the DMRC had increased the number of trains to nearly 70 with the introduction of 31 eight-coach trains last year. The increase in the number of trains meant that trains were being run at very short intervals, especially during the peak hours. However, the frequent snags can be attributed to faults in the synchronisation of various components in the metro network. “There are several aspects which are involved in the running of a metro train. There is a track system, signaling system and over-head electrification (OHE) system among others. The important point is that synchronisation of all these aspects was initially designed to take a maximum train frequency of three minutes. But now, the same has increased resulting in the system to get overloaded often,” said a source.
Keeping this point in mind, it is pertinent to note that most of the faults have often occurred during the peak hours itself. On July 1, train services on the Blue line were affected due to problems in an OHE booster transformer at 10:20 am, which is during the peak time. On June 4 and May 7 as well, the glitches occurred during the rush hours.
Meanwhile, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation disagrees with the point and said it was instead because the Blue line was the longest elevated corridor in the entire network of the DMRC. “The problems are not occurring because of the increased frequency of trains. It is because it is the only line most of whose part is vulnerable to the changing weather conditions. Most of the snags have occurred because of foreign objects getting entangled with the OHE wire. Second reason is that the line runs through some of the most congested areas in the city,” said a senior official.