New Delhi: Thousands of the north-eastern dwellers in national Capital will now get a relief from the traffic jam as Delhi Metro has decided to open its 17.86 km-long Shiv Vihar-Trilokpuri Sanjay Lake section of the Delhi Metro's Pink Line for passengers on October 31. The Commissioner For Metro Rail Safety (CMRS) had given the clearance after inspecting the elevated section in east Delhi on October 20.
"Shiv Vihar-Trilokpuri Sanjay Lake section of Delhi Metro's Pink Line will be formally flagged off for passenger operations on October 31 by Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri and Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia," a senior DMRC official said.
The elevated section consists of 15 elevated stations, three of which are interchange facilities. The stations are Trilokpuri Sanjay Lake, East Vinod Nagar-Mayur Vihar-II, Mandawali-West Vinod Nagar, IP Extension, Anand Vihar ISBT, Karkardooma, Karkardooma Court, Krishna Nagar, East Azad Nagar, Welcome, Jaffrabad, Maujpur-Babarpur, Gokulpuri, Johri Enclave and Shiv Vihar.
According to the official, "The special thing is that this will be the first section of Metro to facilitate better connectivity to large parts of north east Delhi, which will facilitate the movement of millions of people." He added that the section has three interchange stations, at Anand Vihar (with Blue Line), Karkardooma (with Blue Line) and Welcome (with Red Line). "This section will connect to major transport facilities coming across the Delhi-NCR, like Anand Vihar railway station and Anand Vihar UP State bus stand," he further said.
After the opening of this new section, the Delhi Metro network will expand to nearly 314 km. Once inaugurated, it will leave just the Lajpat Nagar-Trilokpuri corridor unopened. Incidentally, a small section near Trilokpuri is facing a roadblock, due to issues raised by local residents, which the metro has been resolving for a long time. The Shiv Vihar-Trilokpuri Sanjay Lake stretch is part of the 59 km-long Majlis Park-Shiv Vihar corridor (Pink Line) which falls under the Phase-III network of the DMRC.
On August 6, the Majlis Park-Lajpat Nagar corridor was inaugurated, taking the Pink Line span to 29.66 km, and the entire operational span of the DMRC to 296 km with 214 stations. The first corridor of the Pink Line, spanning over 20 km, from Majlis Park to Durgabai Deshmukh South Campus, was opened on March 14, connecting north and south campuses of the Delhi University on the DMRC network for the first time.
Smart cards to get auto top up facility
New Delhi: In a bid to provide seamless movement to the commuters, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) is going to upgrade the ticketing technology and has invited the expression of interest for implementation of rolling deposit scheme in collaboration with the respective banks and the service providers.
According to the sources, the commuter willing to avail the auto top up facility for smart card will submit a mandate form to bank/service provider with relevant details of his/her bank account/ service provider to debit the bank/ card account. The bank/service provider will maintain a rolling deposit scheme (RDS) with DMRC and the RDS will be deducted for each auto top up. The auto top up amount in turn will be collected from the customer subsequently by service provider.
In addition, the commuter can use a dedicated App of the bank/ service provider on his smart phone to activate the auto top up facility, he added. The DMRC official further added that the bank/service provider will procure DMRC smart cards from empanelled card manufacturer as per DMRC smart card specification to be further distributed to their customers. "Auto top-up enabling of these smart cards will be done by DMRC. These smart card will be a single chip DMRC smart cards and no other chip or magnetic strip apart from DMRC chip will be allowed on these cards, he added.
However advertisement by Bank/service provider on smart card will be allowed. Printing of advertisement on smart card will require approval of DMRC representative, the official said. The bank/service provider will be solely responsible towards collection of amount post auto top-up of the smart card. DMRC will not be liable for any risk related to the payment collections. The bank/service provider will deposit BG of appropriate amount during the contract period, the official added.