Evening rush-hour services on Delhi Metro’s Blue Line were severely affected on Tuesday as a portion of the overhead wiring of the network sagged after being hit by an eagle, which also triggered a short circuit.
As trains ran on a single line between Indraprastha and Yamuna Bank stations, for nearly three hours, crowds swelled across stations of the busy corridor that connects Noida City Centre and Vaishali to west Delhi’s Dwarka.
The trouble began around 4.55 p.m — minutes before the start of the evening peak period that sees thousands of home-bound commuters taking the rapid transit — when an eagle hit the overhead wires leading to a short circuit.
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“The overhead equipment broke and got entangled with a train passing under it. Single line operation was introduced between IP and Yamuna Bank stations,” said a Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) spokesperson.
Swelling crowds
As the situation turned from bad to worse at the Yamuna Bank metro station, which is the link station from where trains running on the Blue Line branch out towards Noida or Vaishali, the spill over started to be seen at the busy interchange stations like Rajiv Chowk and Mandi House.
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As the massive crowds jostled to get into the already packed trains, many commuters decided to try their luck on the road.
Naina Nath, who was trying to get back home to Noida from her office in Gurugram, got a shock when she got off at the Rajiv Chowk station to change to the Blue Line. As the crowd swelled, Ms. Nath decided to take a cab but had to wait for over 45 minutes before a taxi was available.
Long gaps
The spokesperson said that necessary repair work was completed by 7.40 pm. The frequency, however, remained affected with commuters claiming that trains were arriving at gaps of over ten minutes.
The over 50-km-long Blue Line, DMRC’s longest corridor as of now, is extremely snag-prone due to a host of factors including its vulnerability to external factors as it is largely overground.