Screen gates at six Metro stations soon

In a bid to obliterate potential harm to the Metro commuters, installation of platform screen doors on the six busiest stations of the Jahangirpuri-Huda City Centre corridor is set to begin next month and is expected to be operational by the latter half of the year. Officials said that the additional doors will thwart the incidents of potential harm to the passengers by accident or deliberately.

“Although prototype work that entails constructing sample gates will commence in a few days, actual work at stations will start only in February. We don’t have a deadline as such, but the work will be over by the latter half of the year,” a Delhi Metro Rail Corporation spokesperson said.

The 1.7 metre high gates, which are already in place in the Airport Express Line, will come up at Central Secretariat, Rajiv Chowk, New Delhi Railway Station, Chawri Bazar, Chandni Chowk, and Kashmere Gate of the Yellow line, or Line 2, in the first phase of the work. Officials said that these doors will lead to better crowd management and optimum utilisation of platform space as people will not stand scattered all over the platform in a bid to rush into the coaches as they do now, an official said.

A DMRC team is assisting a consortium of Korean and Indian firms, which have been awarded the contracts, to work out the logistics and the design aspects for smooth integration of the project with the existing components.

“These screens can be installed only during non-revenue hours on the availability of blocks. Lot of integration is required with various components of Metro operations for smooth operation of the gates,” the spokesperson added.

According to the DMRC, all stations of the upcoming Mukundpur-Shiv Vihar (Line 7) and Janakpuri West-Botanical Garden (Line 8) corridors will have platform screen gates. “There will be automated half-height platform gates as per technical specifications approved by us on all 38 stations of Line 7 and 25 stations of Line 8 of Phase III,” an official said.

The deadline for installing platform screen gates in the upcoming Line 7 is August 2016 and the same has been fixed at September 2017 for Line 8.