18 underground Metro stations to have full-height platform screens for safety

New Delhi: Eighteen underground stations coming up under the Phase-IV of the Delhi Metro will have full-height platform screen doors (PSDs), a feature currently seen only at the Airport Line, a senior official said.

The remaining elevated stations will have half-height PSDs like some of the corridors have at present, he said.

Under phase-4, the Delhi Metro is adding around 65 km on new lines on three corridors Majlis Park to Maujpur (12.31 km), Janakpuri West to R K Ashram Marg (29.26 km), and Delhi Aerocity to Tughlakabad or Silver Line (23.62 km) with a total of 45 stations.

The construction work on these corridors is under progress.

All new stations on these three corridors will have PSDs.

"This (PSDs) will also help in energy saving and better air circulation in the station area, as doors will prevent loss of air circulation on the platform or tunnel side," the official said.

At present, the Airport Line has full-height PSDs at all its stations, while Pink Line and Magenta Line have half-height PSDs. In the phase under development, Janakpuri West to RK Ashram Marg corridor (with 9.41 km underground section), an extension of Magenta Line, will have 22 stations -- seven underground and eight elevated.

Majlis Park to Maujpur will only have elevated stations (eight in number), and Delhi Aerocity to Tughlakabad (with 19.34 km underground section) will have 15 stations — 11 underground and four elevated, the DMRC said.

Besides the Pink Line and Magenta Line, Chandni Chowk, Chawri Bazaar, New Delhi, Central Secretariat, Kashmere Gate, and Rajiv Chowk stations on Yellow Line too have half-height PSDs.

The work on phase IV had begun in December 2019 with a groundbreaking ceremony, but the work was hit after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 in Delhi.

Some of the sections of two of the three priority corridors were planned to be opened by March next year, the then DMRC chief Mangu Singh had told PTI in an interview on March 31.

He had also said that the final operationalisation of the entire fourth phase of the project might get stretched to March 2025, though the urban transporter was still working with the December 2024 completion timeline.

"Small sections of both Line 7 (Pink Line) and Line 8 (Magenta Line), which are being built as part of phase-IV priority corridors, would probably be operational in a year's time from now, or by March 2023," he had said.

The Union Cabinet had in March 2019 approved three out of the six corridors of the Delhi Metro's Phase-IV to further improve connectivity in the national capital.

The other three proposed corridors which have not yet been approved by the Union Cabinet are Rithala-Bawana-Narela, Inderlok-Indraprastha, and Lajpat Nagar-Saket G Block.