Commuters travelling on Mass Rapid Transit System (MRTS) trains have once again complained of non-functional lifts and escalators in some of the stations over the past couple of days.
Officials said they had taken precautionary measures to prevent flooding of the vaults of elevators and escalators at Light House and Chintadripet stations and hence, turned them off. Commuters said that at Tirumayilai station, people could not even enter the lifts on the ground floor at the southern end of the platform. Workers had recently pinned wooden sheets across the entrance.
At Taramani, one of the escalators did not function, with commuters tweeting to railway officials about the problem. Southern Railway officials however said that while some of the facilities did not function due to mechanical snags, at Taramani, a commuter had pressed the emergency button. The commuter, officials said, was in the first floor and stopped the escalator to reach the ground floor. The issue was attended to soon, they said.
Officials in the engineering department said that in the case of Tirumayilai, they had no other option but to prevent access to the lifts due to nuisance caused either by commuters or residents living around the station. “People even defecate inside it. We have tried all possible methods to prevent people from causing a nuisance, but nothing has helped, and hence, we shut it down,” officials said. Two lifts on the northern end of the platform were however functioning properly, they added.
