Signal snag leaves Delhi Metro commuters stranded

Signalling woes and subsequent application of emergency brakes on the Delhi Metro’s Samaypur Badli to Huda City Centre corridor of Yellow line created inconvenience to commuters during morning peak hours on Thursday along the entire corridor.

According to Delhi Metro officials, a HUDA City Centre-bound train developed a snag around 8 am after it reached the Model Town station. It behaved erratically till Rajiv Chowk station before it was withdrawn from service.

“The signalling problem led to the application of emergency brakes. It resulted in slow movement of this train leading to bunching of the trains behind on the Line between 8.14 am and 9.10 am,” a Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) official said.

Subsequently, as trains crawled, peak-hour crowd swelled by hundreds and thousands. Stretches that are usually covered in less than 30 minutes took more than an hour, frustrating passengers.

“When you travel by Metro, you do not expect a local train experience. But today people were crawling on each other, jostling for some space,” Annu Choudhury, who travelled from Hauz Khas to Sikanderpur, said.

DMRC attributed the application of emergency brakes to the “fail-safe” feature of the trains, which it said ensures safety of passengers as brakes are applied automatically by the system when such errors occur.

“In order to avoid further impact on services due to cascading effect, the passengers were deboarded at Rajiv Chowk station and the train was withdrawn from the service and sent back to the Depot for investigation,” it said.