lessons in city’s subway sandwich. Chaos ruled the day as yet another technical snag hit train services on the crowded Noida City Centre-Vaishali-Dwarka line on Friday leaving thousands of commuters stranded.
Passengers faced a harrowing time for over an hour on the busy line as the fault occurred between Yamuna Bank to Noida/Vaishali section of the line. Due to snag in the signalling system of the line at Yamuna Bank, train services were operated in a loop from Indraprastha to Dwarka. Officially, train services were disrupted for half-an-hour between 6.10 pm and 6.40 pm, but the commuters complained that the operations could be normalised only after an hour.
With a daily ridership of 9.2 lakh, the Blue line is the most crowded line in the Delhi Metro network. The glitch led to crowding on Metro stations, more so, on the Noida and Vaishali section since the trains were not arriving. Huge crowds were seen at Yamuna Bank, Pragati Maidan, Yamuna Bank, Vaishali and the busy interchange station, Rajiv Chowk. “With surging crowd at Rajiv Chowk station, the station entry had to be closed from 6.25 pm to 6.50 pm. Though the station entry was opened after that, the crowd could only be dispersed after 7.30 pm,” said a Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) official.
Festive rush ahead of Diwali had added to the numbers normally witnessed at Rajiv Chowk station, said the officials. Commuters complained that the snag caused significant delays in their schedule as a 30-minute train ride was taking an hour. “It took me an hour to reach Noida Sector 18 from Rajiv Chowk, a journey which usually takes 30 minutes. The absence of trains at Rajiv Chowk led to passenger buildup at the station. Even when the trains arrived, they were packed cheek by jowl,” said laboni Bhattacharya, a Delhi University student.
Intermittent services plagued the corridor. “I was stuck inside the train for an hour as the train which started at 6 pm was stalled at Indraprastha for close to 40 minutes. The train resumed service only to stall again 10 minutes later. This continued for an hour after which the train services were finally restored,” said Alok Sharma, another hassled passenger.