No Footbridge, Just Tracks: Gurugram Commuters Forced To Walk Cyber City Tracks After Rapid Metro Stalls Due To Sector 72 Substation Fire

Gurugram: The evening commuters in Gurugram faced a harrowing situation on Friday when a sudden power failure brought the city’s Rapid Metro to a standstill. The halted Rapid Metro left passengers with no option but to disembark and walk along the tracks to reach the nearest station, near Cyber City. The disruption turned routine journeys home into an ordeal, as trains stopped mid-route through Cyber City with doors unable to open and lights going out.

The chaos was triggered by a major fault at the 220 KVA power substation in Sector 72, where a transformer blast plunged large parts of the glitzy city into darkness. The Rapid Metro network, with electricity cut off, lost power and services were suspended, stranding hundreds of people inside carriages during peak evening hours.

The images and footage that circulated later showed passengers carefully making their way along the elevated viaduct in Cyber City. The viral clips showed commuters walking on the tracks of the Rapid Metro running in Cyber City Gurugram, where, due to a fault in the transformer, the people who were stuck in the Rapid Metro were forced to reach the station by walking on the tracks.

Transformer Blast Triggers City-Wide Blackout

The incident began when the 220 KVA transformer blasted at the Sector 72 substation, causing the glitzy city to go dark. The failure knocked 7 major substations offline, affecting residential and commercial areas from Sector 38 to Sector 57, as well as parts of Sector 15 and Sector 18. The officials confirmed that the substations impacted included Sector 15, 38, 44, 46, 52, 56 and the Maruti 66 KVA power station.

The Rapid Metro stopped with the grid down, and the commuters had to walk on the tracks. The 12.85 km network, which links Sikanderpur on the Delhi Metro’s Yellow Line with Sector 55-56 via 11 stations, remained suspended for over an hour. The outage for thousands who depend on the service daily meant long delays and anxious waits in darkened coaches before staff guided them out.

The metro personnel assisted passengers as they exited onto the tracks, with many seen using their mobile phone torches to navigate the concrete path towards the next station. The parents held children’s hands, office workers balanced laptops and bags, and some elderly commuters were supported by fellow passengers. 

The officials stated that repair work on the damaged transformer was underway on Friday evening, but cautioned that restoring the power system could take between 8 and 10 hours. The Rapid Metro authorities stated that services would resume only once stable electricity was restored to the network. 

Further details regarding the power outage in Gurugram are awaited.