‘You cannot walk on Lagos Blue Rail tracks because it will run on electricity’- Sanwo-Olu

Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu has said that the Lagos Blue Rail line will run on electricity and it will therefore be dangerous for anyone to go near the rail tracks.

The governor urged the media to help in drumming this into the ears of Lagos residents, especially as some people have started vandalizing part of what has been done.

Sanwo-Olu said 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.

The governor spoke on Sunday while inspecting both the Blue and Red rail lines in Lagos, which are 90 per cent completed.

“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 6 months, 8 months, we need to mention that, 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 that they are electric train lines”.