Cracks appear on Metro rail tracks between RV Road and Yelachenahalli, service suspended

Metro services between RV Road and Yelachenahalli stations on the Green Line will be suspended until Monday.

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Namma Metro services between RV Road and Yelachenahalli stations on the Green Line will be suspended from 9 pm on Saturday to 11 pm on Sunday due to cracks found on the tracks.

Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd. (BMRCL) officials said that track maintenance work will be taken up at Yelachenahalli station. The decision comes after officials recently discovered a crack near the crossover section, that connects two parallel tracks and allow trains to switch from one track to another, at the station reported Times of India.

Officials have diverted all trains to platform number 2 in the station.

BMRCL chief public relations officer UA Vasanth Rao confirmed that services will be suspended for over 24 hours in three stations – Banashankari, JP Nagar and Yelachenahalli. The stations will remain closed for maintenance work and the services are likely to be back on track on Monday.

A press release by the BMRCL read, “There will be no metro train services between RV Road and Yelachenahalli stations from 9 pm on 24 Feb and 11 pm on 25 Feb as urgent track maintenance works are to be undertaken at Yelachenahalli station.”

“Cracks have been found on the crossover at the entrance of Yelachenahalli Station. Banashankari JP Nagar and Yelachenahalli stations will be shut. The green line will function till RV Road. We have sent our concerns to VAE Austria which supplied the crossovers for the metro. Inspections have been on at all stations since February 14 when the cracks were first noticed at Yelachenahalli,” Mahendra Jain, Director, BMRCL said.

Currently, at least four lakh people use the Bengaluru metro each day for commute on its north-south (green) and east-west (purple) lines.

The metro service, which opened to the public in June 2017, has not eased the traffic congestion on the city's arterial roads as it covers a mere 42 km of the 800 km city, with ever-expanding suburbs.

The BEML has also been given a contract to convert all the Bengaluru Metro’s three-coach trains to six-coach units and this is expected to be in place by 2019.

With the addition of three coaches to each of the metro trains, the number of passengers to ride the metro each day is expected to double to about eight lakh.