In view of the festive season, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) decided to launch a special drive to ensure smooth operation of its trains, a DMRC's press statement said on Sunday.
Director (Operations) Sharat Sharma has directed all the officials of Operations and Maintenance wing to intensify their travel by the metro while moving to and fro duty.
According to the DMRC, the special drive is aimed at ensuring that any minor issue or incidence which may affect pleasant travel experience for the millions of passengers in this festive season is directly monitored and attended to by the officials in the least possible time.
The drive is also intended towards ensuring the "highest level" of cleanliness on its premises. The services of the Delhi Metro, which started operations in 2002, is on Sunday availed by nearly 30 lakh passengers daily, according to the DMRC.
Currently, its network consists of about 218.17 km with 164 stations, along with six more stations of the Airport Express link. The network has now crossed the boundaries of Delhi to reach Noida and Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh and Gurgaon and Faridabad in Haryana.The DMRC at present has 235 train sets of four, six and eight coaches, according to the information on its website.
Talking about the measures taken by the DMRC in past five years, a senior DMRC official said, " The Delhi Metro has enhanced its carrying capacity by 45 percent in the last five years (2012-2017). While in 2012, DMRC operated with a fleet of 1,034 coaches, the number has significantly increased to 1,496 in the year 2017. In other words, 115 additional trains of 4-coach or 77 trains of 6-coach formation were added into the system during this period to facilitate the passengers.
Apart from the capacity, the frequency of trains on all metro lines were significantly improved to provide enhanced carrying capacity per hour, with highest increase on Violet line from 5 minute in 2012 to 3 min 24 sec in 2017 thereby, enhancing the carrying capacity of the line from 12624 to 27972 per hour.