RailEnquiry

The electronic display boards at Metro stations lied to passengers through most of Tuesday as snags in the automatic signalling system delayed services for the second consecutive day.Aimed at increasing the frequency of Metro trains from six minutes to four minutes, the automatic signalling system has had quite the opposite effect. Passengers complained that trains stopped at each station for two to three minutes on Tuesday afternoon.Metro officials chose to play down the disruption as teething trouble. “There was a problem with the automatic signalling system at Girish Park. It was detected at 2.44pm and fixed by 3.30pm. During this time, trains ran at an interval of eight minutes instead of six,” said deputy general manager (general), Metro Railway.The display boards, however, continued to show the original timing of trains at most stations. “I reached Jatin Das Park station at 3.47pm and just missed the 3.45pm Dum Dum-bound train, which was late by two minutes. The next train was scheduled for 3.51pm but came at 3.56pm,” said Kalpana Anand, an accountant with a private firm at Chandni Chowk.Calcuttans had faced similar problems when turnstiles were replaced by flap gates at Metro stations last year. If it was the absence of volunteers that led to chaos during the transition from magnetic strip tickets to tokens and smart cards, commuters this time are complaining about the lack of announcements.

“Why can’t there be announcements so that passengers are aware of what’s going on and when they can expect the next train?” Anand said.

Metro officials, however, claimed announcements were being made on the public address system.

Blaming the problems on a lack of trial runs, a Metro official said the track circuit system — because of which the signal turns green for a rake — was failing at places. “Extensive trial runs should be conducted to iron out glitches. But it would be impossible to stop Metro for a week to fix these teething problems,” he said.