Last Updated : | Source: Moneycontrol.com

Delhi Metro reopening: Magenta and Grey Lines services resume

Operational hours on Friday have been increased to 7 am to 1 pm in the morning and 4 pm to 10 pm in the evening.

Vandana Ramnani

After a graded reopening of Delhi's public transport lifeline, the Delhi Metro on September 11 restarted services on the Magenta and Grey lines.

Operational hours on Friday have been increased to 7 am to 1 pm in the morning and 4 pm to 10 pm in the evening. Until September 10, trains were running from 7 am to 11 am and in the evening from 4 pm to 8 pm.

Metro services will be restored to pre-COVID levels from September 12, officials said, adding trains will be operating from 6 am to 11 pm. The Airport Express Line for passengers will be operational from Saturday.

Close

On September 10, around 84,841 passengers boarded the metro as the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation's (DMRC) Red, Green, and Violet lines resumed services with the same schedule of four hours of passenger service each in the morning and evening, under Stage-I plan of resumption of services.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

Show

Vandana Ramnani

Associate Editor, Real Estate|Moneycontrol News

Nine lines of the Delhi Metro network are now open.

The Magenta line (Line 8) runs from Janakpuri West to Botanical Garden (37.5 km with 25 stations) and the Grey line (Line 9) from Dwarka to Najafgarh (4.3 km and three stations).

Since September 7, metro trains were being operated for 4 hours each in the morning and evening. All the lines pressed into service until September 11, 2020, under both stages I and II, will be operational for 6 hours each-- in the morning (from 7 am to 1 pm) and evening (4 pm to 10 pm)-- with broadly the same frequency prior to the lockdown.

These service timings will remain valid only for September 11, and normal timings, from 6 am to 11 pm, will become applicable from September 12 onward on all lines after the last line of Delhi Metro network (the Airport Express Line from New Delhi to Dwarka Sec-21) is made operational under Stage-III, the last stage under graded resumption plan of Metro services.

On Sundays, starting September 20, train services will commence at 8 am. However, this Sunday i.e. September 13, services on these lines will commence at 6 am as per the existing schedule.

All lines of the Delhi Metro network, comprising 349 km and 253 Metro stations, will be fully operational and restored to pre-COVID levels once again from September 12 onward.

"Owing to new norms of social distancing in place now which has significantly reduced the number of passengers on trains, DMRC has also decided to run the peak hour frequency of trains from 8 am to 8 pm, doing away with the concept of off-peak hours from 11 am to 4 pm where services were available with less trains/trips earlier," said Anuj Dayal, executive director, Corporate Communications, DMRC.

General public is once again advised to adhere to social distancing norms/guidelines during the Metro travel due to ongoing pandemic and also keep following DMRC’s website/social media platforms for regular updates on various dos and don'ts required to be followed in these times for their own convenience, before heading out for the Metro station, he said.

The home ministry had issued guidelines allowing metro services in the country to resume operations in a graded manner, following which DMRC had said it would be done in three stages from September 7-12. DMRC had appealed to passengers to travel light and "talk less inside trains to prevent the possibility of short-range aerosol transmission".

Due to the pandemic and strict social distancing norms, the carrying capacity of a train has been drastically reduced to around 20 percent of the pre-lockdown period. Passengers have been advised to avoid unnecessary travel as far as possible.

Besides Delhi, Metro networks also restarted operations on September 7 in a graded manner in Lucknow, Kochi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Ahmedabad, but remained closed in Mumbai, Nagpur, Kolkata and Jaipur.

Metro Railway services in Kolkata will resume on September 14 after remaining suspended for more than five months.

The Maharashtra government had on September 1 decided against the immediate resumption of Metro and local train services. No decision has been taken yet on restarting metro services in Jaipur.

First Published on Sep 11, 2020 09:05 am