NEW DELHI: After receiving complaints from commuters over the reduced frequency of train services, Delhi Metro on Tuesday rescheduled the timings. The frequency at morning and evening peak hours was increased to 15 minutes from 30 minutes.
During non-peak hours, it will be 30 minutes instead of an hour. DMRC in a statement said that to offer more capacity in compliance with the 50 per cent seating provision with no standing during the curfew period (until April 26), it has now decided to revise its plan. This comes after large gatherings of people working in essential services outside various metro stations.
“Services during morning (7AM to 11AM) and evening (4PM to 8PM) peak hours across the network will be available with a headway (frequency) of 15 minutes. For rest of the hours of the day, services across the network will be available with a frequency of 30 minutes,” said the statement. In addition, standby trains on each line shall also be available all day for induction into services as per requirement.
Unable to control the crowd, DMRC had closed around 15- 20 busy stations such as Shadipur, Dwarka Mor, Tagore Garden, Rajouri Garden, Patel Nagar, Subhash Nagar, Kirti Nagar, Rajendra Place, Moti Nagar, Jhandewalan, RK Ashram Marg, Kashmere Gate, Anand Vihar ISBT and many others. Commuters were angered by the closure of entrances and long queues.
Many took to Twitter to complain about the social distancing and crowd management by DMRC. “Please revise your timings to run trains. In office hours, please run trains at normal intervals so that crowds may be avoided and everyone into essential services may reach office in time as well. After office hours you may run trains at an interval of 1 hour.
Think first,” tweeted Rishab Kumar. Medical employee Merlin Alex said: “Respected DMRC, as per your scheduled timings in morning time Metro is running from 8am to 10 pm. All the hospital staffs have to reach their duty by 8 am. This timing doesn’t benefit us and the same applies during evening hours as well. Kindly change your timings.”