The Hindu : New Delhi News : Delhi Metro hopeful of living up to its reputation

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Wednesday, Oct 28, 2009
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New Delhi

Delhi Metro hopeful of living up to its reputation

Staff Reporter

“There will be 180 km more of metro by next year, the number of stations 141”

“There are at least 75 faults that could cause delays in arrival and departure”
“Delays caused by maintenance work cannot be helped and inconvenience to the public minimum”

NEW DELHI: As it stretches across the Capital and into neighbouring States, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation is hopeful that even with an expanded network it will be able to maintain its much talked-about record of punctuality and be considered among the top five metros in the world.

Senior DMRC officials said on Tuesday that the metro’s future is all about volume.

“There will be 180 km more of metro by next year, the number of employees directly under DMRC will rise to 6,000, the number of stations will be 141, the number of trains over 200,” said Director (Operations) Rajkumar.

Referring to recent public complaints of delays in arrival and departure of metro trains and elevators and escalators getting jammed, the officials said there were at least 75 faults that could cause delays. “The doors of the metro trains open at least 2 lakh times a day and the doors can be jammed by the presence of foreign objects like nails, bird droppings and stones. Escalators can stop functioning because of commuters running on them. Everyday there are at least two-three cases of people falling on escalators,” said Mr. Rajkumar.

The DMRC officials said delays caused by maintenance work could not be helped and the DMRC ensures that even during such works, inconvenience to the public is minimum.

“There is a tendency among people to think that the DMRC is super perfect, but we have a huge network and a large number of trains and tracks to maintain. At stations where the footfalls are large, we try to enforce queues and discipline, we try and stick to our punctuality schedule, but sometimes incidents like theft of cable cause delays and affect services. In the last one year we have had 57 cases of theft alone,” he said referring to the challenges that the DMRC faces while executing work.

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