Articles / A Capital Metro for India, But Is It Enough?

Credit: Shanti Menon

Nandini Velho, a new arrival from the laid-back seaside town of Goa, rides the Delhi Metro every day to work. She boards the women’s-only compartment at Haus Khas station, switches trains at the crowded Central Secretariat, and then gets off at JLN Stadium, right in front of the Ministry of Environment and Forests, where she’s an intern. The half-hour journey takes about the same amount of time, and even costs about the same, as it would by auto-rickshaw -- the three-wheeled taxis that prowl the roads of India’s capital -- but Velho prefers the safety and comfort of the Metro.

“Delhi auto drivers can act really funny sometimes,” she says. “I prefer to go along with the crowd.”

Metro fever is sweeping the subcontinent -- about 15 Indian cities have Metro plans in the works. Delhi’s Metro first started operations on a small scale in 2002, and in 2010 its major second phase was completed, connecting the capital to its satellite cities and dramatically boosting ridership. Today, the Metro carries about 1.6 million riders each day.

In a country with a reputation for gleeful chaos and wearying inefficiency, Delhi’s gleaming, high-tech Metro is a source of fierce national pride. It is swift, quiet, efficient, and clean like no other public space in the city, let alone the country. It is generating the kind of glowing international headlines that chauvinistic Indians love.

On paper, Delhi’s transportation statistics seem like a transit activist’s dream. According to a 2008 survey, nearly 75 percent of trips in the city are completed on foot, bicycle or public transit, while just 10 percent are by car. (The remainder are on motorized two- and three-wheelers.)

But those statistics are less a measure of smart urban development than of an economic reality. Most people simply can’t afford to drive. Only 17 out of 1000 Delhi residents own a car (much higher than the Indian national average of 8 cars per 1000 people). Less than half own any motorized vehicle at all. And yet Delhi’s roads are hopelessly congested.

For all Delhi residents, regardless of income, getting around town is a nightmare. The city’s millions of pedestrians, cyclists and bus riders share the same roadway as cars, trucks, auto-rickshaws, pushcart vendors and the occasional ruminant. And despite the fact that they carry only 25 percent of the city’s commuters, cars and two-wheelers (motorcycles and scooters) take up 75 percent of Delhi’s precious road space.

Cars Rev Up, With No Place to Go
A report by India’s Central Road Research Institute says that the Metro has taken nearly 40,000 cars off the road. It’s an achievement, but it won’t offset the rapid rise in new car ownership. The number of cars in the city, as elsewhere in India, is rising rapidly. India’s Centre for Science and the Environment estimates that 1,000 new cars hit Delhi’s roads every day. Many argue that these new cars, such as the high-mileage Tata Nano, are safer than walking or bicycling in Delhi’s traffic, but these additional cars also increase the threat to non-drivers.

Some urban planning experts say that the Metro, despite its accolades, is not going to solve Delhi’s horrendous traffic problems. Metro ridership is still well below official projections of 2.2 million riders by 2005. Delhi’s roads, clogged and congested as they are, are still the city’s lifeline.

“Some car trips have been moved to the Metro, but that space is getting filled by new cars,” says Geetam Tiwari, a professor of transport planning at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi.

Make Way for Buses
Tiwari and her colleagues helped design Delhi’s Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system, which launched to considerably less fanfare than the Metro in 2006. Tiwari thinks it’s the key to solving Delhi’s transportation woes – at least for those who don’t drive. After walking, Delhi’s buses are the city’s second most highly used form of transportation and account for more than a quarter of all trips around the city.

Delhi’s BRT converts three lanes of mixed traffic on a major road into one exclusive lane for buses and emergency vehicles, two lanes for other motorized vehicles, and adds a bicycle lane and a pedestrian path to the roadway.

When the BRT first opened, this unprecedented demarcation of traffic baffled commuters. Cars and pedestrians invaded the bus lanes and, tragically, several people were killed. On top of the general disregard for the new rules, traffic signals failed and several buses broke down, blocking lanes and further delaying traffic.

Car owners were particularly incensed that their three-lane road was cut down to two—and said so, loudly. Media coverage in the English-language press (mostly aimed at India’s driving upper middle class) was scathing, and politicians, alarmed by the outcry, were quick to distance themselves publicly from the project.

Despite the rocky start, the BRT’s first phase of 14 kilometers was quietly completed, running from south Delhi, through a couple of tony residential neighborhoods, right into the heart of town. It’s in one of the most highly trafficked areas of the city, with 54 bus routes passing through all or part of it.

Today, the system runs more smoothly, moving about 12,000 passengers per hour during peak times, with a total daily ridership of about 85,000. Bus speeds along the BRT have increased 50 percent, says Tiwari, and bus riders couldn’t be happier.  “I think the car owners’ biggest complaint is that the buses are flying by while they feel they are stuck in traffic,” says Tiwari.

Dealing with Delhi's Growth

Delhi’s population is expected to expand from its present 17 million to 24 million by 2021. The city’s latest master plan involves not only expanding the Metro to 415 kilometers (longer than the London Underground), but integrating it with nearly 600 kilometers of BRT routes. Nearly every artery in the city will have an exclusive bus lane, at least in peak hours, by 2011. And while the BRT might not have the sleek engineering of the Metro, it’s certainly high-tech. The city is in the process of installing GPS systems on thousands of buses, and about 100 bus shelters already display real time information on bus arrivals. Riders can also get arrival information by SMS, making it much easier for commuters to time their trips.

Nine other Indian cities are considering BRT systems, perhaps inspired by the highly regarded BRT in Ahmedabad, a city of 5.6 million in the western state of Gujarat. The Janmarg, or “People’s Way,” as it’s known, won the 2010 Sustainable Transport Award from the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy. The Janmarg carries about 60,000 passengers a day, about 40 percent of whom switched from scooters and autorickshaws to the bus.

“Eventually, there is no other option,” says Tiwari. “We have to believe in our democracy. If this is helping the greatest number of people, then this is what we have to do.”