Commuters face the brunt of signal failure on central line during peak hours on Monday

During peak hours on Monday, a signal failure on the Central line caused thousands of commuters to get late for work.

The signal failure at Vidyavihar station was reported around 10 am. Following the glitch, trains on the Central line were running late by an average of 25 minutes.

Since the failure occurred on the fast track, slow trains were unaffected by the signal failure. Commuters from Kurla and Ghatkopar were seen crossing over and switching to the slow train in the morning.

“It’s one thing when there are delays because of heavy rains. But technical problems during peak hours on a Monday morning are just unacceptable. I reached office late by 15 minutes today because of the delay. This is the third time this month that I’ve reached work late because of train delays,” said Sandeep Patil, who was abroad the Thane-CST local which reached Kurla at 9:45 am instead of the usual time of 9:21 am.

“Since I had left early for work, the delay did not affect me as much. But there was a group of college students in my compartment who had a presentation today. They were extremely tense because of the delay,” Sandeep added.

Railway authorities are on the spot and working on fixing the signal. As of now, there is no estimate as to when the signal will be fixed.

Just three days back, trains on the Central line had been delayed by over an hour after heavy rains caused Sion station to get flooded in water.