BENGALURU: EXACTLY seven days after Namma Metro’s six car coach developed a snag and had to be kept off the tracks for the better part of the day, a technical snag developed on Monday resulting in the 6-car coach again being non-functional on Monday morning.
Last week, the 6-car coach, with a carrying capacity of around 2,000 passengers, developed a technical problem with the braking of the train and could not make its first run scheduled at 8:02am. Subsequently, the train was fixed and put back on the tracks only at 5:34 pm.
With the train being unavailable during the morning peak hours, several thousand passengers were inconvenienced even though BMRCL operated extra three-coach trains.The situation was similar on Monday morning with the BMRCL rushing to run extra trains and short loop services (services between two stations) till the time that the 6-coach train returned to service around 10:20am. “There was an issue with the signalling system as the train was not picking up signals. It was set right by 10:20am,” a BMRCL official said.
Making its debut run on June 22, the six-coach train has been a long-standing demand of Namma Metro users who have been complaining of jam-packed trains for the past one year. Namma Metro’s phase 1, including the Purple and Green lines, regularly sees its daily ridership cross the 4 lakh figure. Over the course of the next one and half years, all trains will be converted to the six coach configuration with the coaches being supplied by BEML.