The Hindu : Easing the burden

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Sep 28, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Easing the burden

By 2005, Delhi's Metro is expected to carry over 21 lakh commuters every day. K. Kannan reports.

THOUGH THE ongoing project spread over several phases will take a long time to complete, the Metro could be the answer to the national capital's transport problems. Planning for a Metro dates back to the early 1970s when the Central Road Research Institute undertook the first exhaustive study. It recommended a mass rapid transit network. Since the CRRI proposal was based on transport demand projection up to the year 1981, reassessing the projection till 2001 was assigned to the Town and Country Planning Organisation. The concept plan prepared by the TCPO envisaged a network of 58 km underground and 195 km on the surface.

Meanwhile, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) recommended a multi-modal transport system comprising 200 km of light rail transit system, 10 km of tramway and extension of the surface rail system. The Delhi Urban Arts Commission suggested some modifications to the DDA proposal and recommended the development of the existing ring railway with three radial underground MRT corridors.

In 1990, a feasibility report on the integrated multi-modal mass rapid transport system of Delhi was prepared by RITES. It recommended a three-component system comprising a rail corridor, Metro corridor and dedicated bus way totalling 184.5 km.

The need for a Metro has long been felt as Delhi has expanded over the last few decades. Its population has increased from 57 lakhs in 1981 to 97 lakhs in 1991 and 137 lakhs in 2001. While the city has spread physically, the number of vehicles in the capital is more than the combined vehicular population of the other three metros. The result is congestion, slower traffic, increase in road accidents, fuel and manhour wastage, pollution and environmental damage.

The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation was set up in 1995 and the first phase of the network comprising 62.5 km of route length with 12.5 km underground called Metro corridor and 60 km elevated called rail corridor is now under execution. The first section from Shahdara to Tis Hazari was inaugurated by the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, on December 24, 2002. Work on the 4.5 km Tis Hazari-Trinagar section in also complete and is slated for inauguration next month.

Tunnel construction work for line 2 of the first phase commenced in July 2002 and two tunnel-boring machines have completed the work from the Patel Chowk end while the third machine has commenced work from the Delhi main end. This section will be commissioned in two stages: first stage from Vishwa Vidyalaya to ISBT (4 km) by December 2004 and the second stage from ISBT to Central Secretariat (7 km) by September 2005.

The benefits of the metro are already being seen in terms of reduction in vehicle-generated pollution in the section where it has become operational. Already, the commuters number 40,000-50,000 a day and when the Shadara-Tis Hazari line is extended till Trinagar, the figure will go up by another 30,000. By 2005, the Metro is expected to carry is 21.82 lakhs passenger a day. "We are not able to provide passengers a complete travel and they still have to depend on other means of transport. However, as we keep extending the lines and open new ones, the ridership will go up tremendously," say DMRC officials.

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