Indication has emerged that Lagos residents would not be able to vandalise parts of the new Lagos Blue Rail line when in operation as it will be powered by electricity.
Lagos State governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, gave the indication, during a tour of the facility.
He hinted that it would be dangerous for anyone to go near the rail tracks, not to talk of vandalising part of it.
The governor urged newsmen to help in drumming this into the ears of Lagos residents, especially as vandals have started tampering with parts of the facility.
According to him, the project is moving to the phase where the power infrastructure would be laid on the rail tracks, which would make it unsafe for humans to go near them.
He said: “The next major activity that needs to happen on the Blue Line is what we call the third rail. The third rail is the power that will now be activated on this rail track.
“The Blue Line, for emphasis, will be running what we call an EMU. It’s going to be an electric motor vehicle. The trains are going to be running on electricity, so they need to have power on the rail tracks.
“So that’s why, we are getting to a stage where there has to be a lot of advocacy, there has to be a lot of information, communication onto the citizens, especially where the track was on grid.
“From Orile Station up until Mile 2, you know that it was at grid level, meaning that it was at ground level and if you have a track at ground level that is electric, you’ve seen that we’ve wired off all the alignment, but you see, a lot of our citizens that do not know, they’ve started breaking all of the rails that we have done there.
“We will go back there and fix it and there has to be a lot of enforcement, a lot of advocacy, because by the end of the year, when this track starts, they are electric tracks, they are going to be running on electricity and you will know that citizens or passengers or anybody whatsoever cannot walk on those things.
“So gentlemen of the press, you have that responsibility for now, we’ll begin to mention that, for the next six months, eight months, we need to mention that this track, it’s not like the Red Line, the Red Line is DMU, but the Blue Line is EMU. So these are some of the communications that we need to pass out about the electric train lines.”
Source: Guardian
