The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation witnessed an eventful 2013 as it took over responsibility of the Airport Metro line's operations, other than kick-starting construction works for Phase III projects but frequent disruption of services due to technical snags hit passengers hard.
DMRC took over the operations of the 22.7-km-long Airport Express Link on July 1, 2013 following a notice by the Delhi Airport Metro Express Private Limited (DAMEPL), a special purpose vehicle of Reliance Infrastructure Ltd, that it would cease to operate after June 30.
Eight coach trains on the Dwarka Sector 21-NOIDA City Centre/Vaishali (Blue line) was introduced from August 19.
DMRC also inducted its first six coach train on the Dilshad Garden to Rithala (Red Line) from November 24.
As part of its works under projects of Phase III, the Delhi Metro will start trial runs for Central Secretariat -Mandi House section of the Central Secretariat-Kashmere Gate corridor on December 30.
The Central Secretariat-Mandi House section will be opened for commuter operations by March this year. This section will tremendously help in decongesting the Rajiv Chowk Metro station as the commuters traveling to Dwarka-NOIDA/Vaishali from the Central Secretariat-Badarpur line will be able to change trains directly at Mandi House without doing twice at Central Secretariat and Rajiv Chowk.
The Dwarka-Vaishali/Noida City Centre metro line was disrupted several times in the year gone by owing to technical problems in Overhead Electrification or Signaling, leading to chaos and harrowing experiences for commuters.
After the breakdowns on several occasions, DMRC constituted a high level committee to investigate the problem.
Construction work for Phase III projects on the upcoming Dwarka-Najafgarh Metro corridor started on September 12 on the elevated section of the corridor between Dwarka and Najafgarh depot.
The Dwarka-Najafgarh section will be 4.4-km-long with three stations. The length of the elevated section will be 2.75 km; the ramp towards the underground section will be 595 m while the underground section will be 1.085-km-long.
