Monthly reports prepared by the IE between January 2016 and June 2017, accessed by DNA, show that while there were 13 technical failures in the Chinese rolling stocks in the first six months of 2016
Monthly reports prepared by the Independent Engineer (IE) of the Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar Metro-1 corridor say the corridor has several technical 'failures' with rolling stock or coaches, signalling, telecommunication, power supply, as well as escalators and lifts at stations. The corridor is operated by Reliance Infrastructure-led Mumbai Metro One Private Limited (MMOPL), and glitches connected to the Automatic Fare Collection gate top the list.
Monthly reports prepared by the IE between January 2016 and June 2017, accessed by DNA, show that while there were 13 technical failures in the Chinese rolling stocks in the first six months of 2016, there were 11 failures in the next six months. In the first six months of 2017 alone, there were as many as 22 failures.
However, none of these hitches have led to major accidents that resulted in loss of human life, and MMOPL has been able to maintain a punctuality rate of around 98-99% every month.
While the IE's monthly reports term them technical 'failures', MMOPL calls them 'faults'. It's officials say that even minor faults are recorded in a transparent manner as part of a robust monitoring mechanism, and are addressed immediately, before they can affect operations.
"Number of faults depends on the traffic and MMOPL is taking corrective action," said a MMOPL spokesperson.
"If the number of faults has gone up over the last year, it is solely on account of heavier footfall and increased number of trips the Metro is undertaking. These faults have not turned into service-affecting failures except in the odd case just because of our stringent processes that ensure that faults do not graduate to failure."
These snags include failure of the Metro doors to open or close, headlights not working, train going into emergency mode, leakage in battery cells, etc. There have also been failures related to signalling and telecommunication— as many as 241 signalling failures were reported between January 2016 and June 2017.
Signalling is crucial for operation of any form of mode of transport. Around 675 telecommunication hitches were reported between January 2016 and June 2017, including 74 failures relating to the radio system between Metro pilot, Metro station and Metro control room, and 448 failures of CCTV cameras.
Topping the list are snags related to the Automatic Fare Collection gate. IE's reports recorded 1,249 of them. There have also been 338 issues in the escalators and lifts at the stations.
"We accord uncompromising priority to commuter safety and performance standards," said the MMOPL spokesperson. "Our robust and pro-active reporting regime is geared towards identifying each minor fault and undertaking immediate remedial action so that these do not graduate to service-disrupting failures. This is how MMOPL manages to maintain its performance of 99.9% punctuality and 100% availability on continuous basis. MMOPL has achieved 100% punctuality continuously for all days of a particular month several times in last 39 months of its operation."
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