Lucknow Metro sets a record as it becomes the first metro project in India that is using ultraviolet (UV) rays to sanitise train coaches.

Lucknow Metro sets a record as it becomes the first metro project in India that is using ultraviolet (UV) rays to sanitise train coaches. Taking inspiration from the New York Metro’s experiment, the UP Metro Rail Corporation (UPMRC) decided to follow a similar path and sanitize trains with the help of UV lamp rays, a report by PTI noted. The UPMRC is taking passenger safety as well as comfort as their topmost priority and they want to provide the safest mode of transportation for people at a time during the Coronavirus outbreak, the report citing UPMRC Managing Director Kumar Keshav said.

The metro officials also claim that the Lucknow Metro is now a pioneer of metro train sanitisation with the use of UV technology. “When we started token sanitation by UV radiation, we received overwhelming response and appreciation from our passengers,” the report quoted Keshav as saying. It added that with the use of this technology, they can gain people’s confidence in using the metros for travelling purposes. Keshav said that more people are now opting for the metro.

The report further claimed Lucknow Metro to be the first metro project in the country that has started token sanitisation as well. This is also done via ‘UV box’ that the corporation has developed in-house, giving an impetus to the Make in India mission.

According to the UPMRC, Lucknow Metro has been using the UV tech in consultation with an Indian firm having expertise on tube lights used in sanitation apparatus, thus, developed a UV sanitisation apparatus that is aimed at sanitising the metro with the help of ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI) disinfection method. To be sure, this method uses short wavelength ultraviolet light of 254 nm UV-C that has the ability to kill or make micro-organisms inactive by simply destroying their nucleic acids and disrupting their DNA.

Last year in October, DRDO certified the apparatus and now it is being used to sanitise the entire coach in seven minutes. However, UPMRC said that they sanitise each and every coach for about 15 minutes. The initiative is economical as it only costs 1/40th of the total cost required when manual sanitisers are sprinkled.