COVID-19 Impact on Metro Rail services: Metro commuters take note! With the growing menace of the Coronavirus outbreak across the country, the government of India has decided that all the metro rail services will be suspended till March 31, 2020. This important step has been taken as a precautionary measure to contain the spread of the Coronavirus COVID-19 infection from person to person.
Metro rail services such as Delhi Metro, Hyderabad Metro and Bengaluru Metro have been taking important steps such as staggered service timings, sanitisation of stations etc to prevent the virus infection on its metro operations. Today, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation has announced that the metro services on all lines will be completely closed till March 31, 2020. However, the internal maintenance operations and security will be taken care of on the network by the CISF during this duration, a DMRC spokesperson told Financial Express Online.
According to a high level meeting which was convened today with the Chief Secretaries of all states by the Cabinet Secretary and the Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it was decided that restrictions on the movement of non-essential passenger transport will be imposed till March 31, 2020. These services include the metro rail operations of Delhi Metro, Bengaluru Metro, Hyderabad Metro, Kochi Metro, Ahmedabad Metro, Chennai Metro, Mumbai Metro, Kolkata Metro, Lucknow Metro, Jaipur Metro.
Apart from the rapid transit metro rail services, the Indian Railways suburban rail services have also been suspended till March 31, 2020. Piyush Goyal-led Railway Ministry has cancelled all Mail/Express train services, premium trains, Konkan Railways and other long distance as well as intercity passenger services from March 22, 2020 till March 31, 2020. The freight train services on the network have been exempted from the suspension, and will continue with its normal services. The inter state passenger transport services have also been stopped till March 31, 2020.
