Krishnan and I had one of our Rajiv Chowk meetings today with Daviender. We took the metro from HUDA City centre around 2.15 pm and right through the trip there were hardly 5 people standing ! The metro was nearly empty. BUT it was uncomfortable because the air conditioner was switched off. Just the fans were circulating the air but there was no air conditioning.
I am very sensitive to stale air – I don’t mind if the air conditioner is not set to the coldest setting, but it must circulate fresh air. Today the metro we took was certainly not doing that. All airlines do that – they switch off the air conditioner as the planes land and are taxiing. I begin to sweat because the air quickly goes stale and warm. It soon becomes suffocating because the airplane is such a small space compared to the train where at least the doors open every few minutes.
We got off at Rajiv Chowk and the air was immediately fresher even with all the pollution. We had our meeting with Daviender and Ambika and again boarded the metro at around 5 pm. We didn’t get seats to sit but it was still easy to stand around – no jostling and pushing around as the crowds hadn’t surged yet. The air conditioning was on and off, slightly better than the 2 pm train but much worse than what we have experienced otherwise.
A request to the DMRC to not cut corners by cutting off the air conditioning – it’s nauseating and really uncomfortable. We need to keep the metro world class and not resort to these cheap gimmicks to save small change. Improve services, keep the trains on time and keep them clean, charge appropriately and people wouldn’t hesitate to pay – you increase the ticket price and cut corners then people will protest.
Hope DMRC is listening.
Last summer in Toronto they had a big problem with the air conditioning in subway cars failing. Normally they are nice and cool, but sometimes you would get on board and it would be packed with people, about 35 C, and humid. I would just walk on, then turn around and walk off. They’ve fixed them again this year so it hasn’t been too bad. Fortunately for us they never seem to have problems with the heat. On -25C days it would not be fun!
Wow, thanks for sharing that bit of information Todd. See, most people in India assume that everything works without a hitch in the developed countries and its just in India that nothing work. I have been to the US several times and have seen the roads being repaired and certain other services missing sometimes, and because of that I understand that its not just in India that things dont work. That is also changing and hopefully will change for good, guess its just human nature to feel better knowing things do go wrong in the public services in Canada and the US :):).