Chennai: For the second time in 24 hours, passengers of Chennai Metro Rail underwent train halts today while on the move that too during peak hours leading to a lot of hassles.
Many IT professionals, for whom Metro rails and their feeder services are the only means of transportation, faced the maximum brunt of the situation. But thankfully officials worked on a war-footing and cleared the lines by 9 am.
The issue started first yesterday morning at 7 am when Metro trains got halted between St Thomas Mount and Alandur stations due to signalling and electrical issues in the software. But within two hours officials sorted things out and trains began running as usual.
Again, today morning 6 am, the services between Central and Airport got halted shortly followed by the services between Koyambedu and Ashok Nagar. Even as passengers longed for the services to resume, they landed in another shock as the entire Koyambedu to Airport line got halted.
For three hours between 6 am and 9 am, there was almost no proper movement of many Metro trains.
Speaking to ‘News Today‘, a CMRL spokesperson said, “Due to traction supply malfunction Metro train services commenced as per schedule from 6 am in the corridor two with only short loop services between Chennai Central and Koyambedu, Koyambedu and Ashok Nagar and Ashok Nagar and St Thomas Mount to ease the passengers inconvenience. The corridor one services were not affected due to the above malfunction and are being operated as per schedule. Post rectification of the traction supply malfunction, normal services were resumed from 9 am in corridor two.”
It is to be noted that, on 12 September, passengers went through a harrowing experience after Metro services got affected. Trains were halted after the signalling software got corrupted.
The software is critical to automatic operations of the services including running of trains, working of systems like automatic fare collection (AFC) gates, schedule display screens and recorded announcements at the stations.