MANILA— More than 500 passengers of the Metro Rail Transit Line 3 (MRT-3) were offloaded on Wednesday reportedly after a power failure in the rail's line.
In an advisory, the MRT-3 said the power malfunction occurred at 10:17 a.m. from Ayala Station to Taft Avenue Station.
At 10:34 a.m., a total of 508 passengers were evacuated and had to walk to the interstation of Magallanes and Ayala (Northbound).
A minute later, power was restored to the rail line.
In a message sent to the media, MRT-3 communications officer Rose Anne dela Cruz said walking over the rails is not dangerous since the trains are powered through overhead catenary cables and not through rails.
“According to our engineers, hindi po risky ang pagbabalik ng power supply habang naglalakad sa riles ang mga pasahero dahil ang power ay nasa itaas at hindi naman po sa riles (it is not risky to restore the power supply while passengers were walking in the rails because the power runs above and not through the rails),” dela Cruz said.
As of 12:15 p.m., dela Cruz said the rail line resumed normal operation with 13 trains running with a wait time of about 9.5 minutes between trains.
Last May 1, the Department of Transportation initiated a comprehensive rehabilitation of the MRT-3 which aims to increase the number of running trains, increase its operating speed, increase passenger capacity from 300,000 to 600,000 daily, and lessen the average wait time between trains from 8 minutes to 3.5 minutes.
The PHP18-billion rehabilitation project was awarded to Sumitomo-MHI-TESP and was tasked to replace all rails along the MRT-3’s 17-kilometer line, overhaul all 72 light rail cars, among other improvements.
The MRT-3 said the rehabilitation will take 26 months to complete or finish on July 2021. (PNA)
