CHENNAI: The Chennai Metro Rail services between Koyambedu and Ashok Nagar were partially hit on Friday because of bird droppings that caused outages on the overhead transmission line. Birds are proving to be a menace for the Metro Rail. It is learnt that Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL) is planning to have ultrasonic bird repellers, which emit high frequency sound waves to keep the birds away, and strobe lights to ensure there is no disruption of train services. A Metro Rail spokesperson said the insulator flash-over by a bird occurred near Arumbakkam station at around 3 pm.
Usually, outages on overhead transmission lines occur due to birds perching on a tower cross-arm.
Before taking-off, they usually empty their bowels. This creates a conductive path that bridges the air gap between tower structure and conductors resulting in a flashover either in parallel to or a little apart from the insulator string.
The spokesperson said trains between Koyambedu and Ashok Nagar are running in a 15-minute headway, instead of the previous 10-minute headway. Of the two lines, only one line was affected and the other line was operational between Koyambedu and Ashok Nagar, the spokesperson said. “We restored the affected line by 6.32 pm,” the spokesperson concluded.