The snag in Delhi Metro on Tuesday had its cascading effect on the road traffic as well. As train services came to standstill during peak hours, road transport facilities bore the brunt.
Scores of passengers — especially at Central Secretariat and Udyog Bhavan Metro Stations — rushed on to the roads to catch the next bus to their destinations. Most were the office-goers who were late to the work places. Buses were over-crowded with even standing space coming at a premium.
People, however, made their desperate bids to get inside the buses to reach their destination. Most of the Metro commuters rued that there was no alternate arrangement made for them by the authorities. Neither Metro feeder buses were available nor were arrangements made in collaboration with the DTC. As a result of the snag, buses were so jam-packed that most of the commuters were hanging at the gate of the buses. “I could not enter the bus as it was jampacked, and so I had to walk down to my office at Ministry of Defence, by walking down from the Central Secretariat.
One of the commuters said that she could not attend her father who was admitted at a hospital in Gurgoan due to this snag. Buses were overloaded with people and there were hardly any autos. Even the frequency of buses in the peak hours was not enough and they had to wait for long to
get a bus.
Meanwhile, Metro ran two short loop services between Green Park to HUDA City Centre and Central Secretariat to Jehangirpuri to ease the rush but it was of no avail. DMRC also cancelled six round trips between Jehangirpuri and HUDA City Centre and four round trips between Vishwavidyalaya and Qutub Minar. Five round trips were delayed and to clear the rush at Rajiv Chowk and Kashmere Gate metro stations, DMRC rushed two empty trains from Vishwavidyalaya to these stations.
During the disruption, trains were running at restricted speed at various stations, which led to bunching of trains on the corridor, which was finally cleared only by the evening. During the peak hours, trains are run at a frequency of three minutes on this corridor but due to the incident trains were running at half and hour interval, some commuters complained.