Challenges with Delhi Metro

What is the issue?

According to recent findings Delhi Metro has failed to reduce surface traffic and city's air pollution.

What are the issues with Delhi metro?

Delhi Metro has one of the lowest passenger-track ratios among the world's major metros, at less than 10,000.
Delhi has fewer cars than required, and unlike peers its stations in heart of the city are few.
Comparisons with cities in other countries show that, for its size, Delhi Metro carries far fewer “riders” than almost any other city’s system.
With 314 km of track, Delhi has a daily rider average of 2.8 million, where China’s Shenzhen has a slightly smaller system (286 km) but carries 60 per cent more riders, at 4.5 million.
And Singapore with less than two-thirds of Delhi’s track length, at 199 km, carries 10 per cent more riders than Delhi, at 3.1 million.
There is no uniformity in numbers across the major Metro systems in the world.

What are the challenges in Delhi’s metro Infrastructure?

Capacity of Trains - The majority of Delhi’s trains have six cars, while some have eight and some four.
On most Metros, a range of six to eight seems to be normal, but New York usually operates between eight and 11 cars per train.
With fewer cars than required, what the usually crowded Delhi Metro has done is to spend money on expensive infrastructure and then under-utilized its potential capacity.
Frequency of Trains - In Delhi, the gap between two trains would appear to be more than three minutes at most times, and six minutes in outlying areas.
Peak traffic times see the frequency increasing to a little over two minutes.
The system seems unable to reduce that further to 90 seconds, achieved on other Metros.
Network of tracks - In many cities, the heart of the city gets special treatment in terms of a very dense network of lines and stations.
Paris has 245 stations in 87 square kilometer area in the heart of the city.
In comparison, Delhi has only 229 stations in all, and much of the track length stretches out into the suburbs, near and far.

What measures needs to be taken?

The range of good metro can be from a top figure of 34,000 riders daily for every kilometer of track in Tokyo and about 27,000 in Hong Kong, to 20,000 for Paris and so on.
Delhi’s metro system should be aiming for a figure of 15,000, and possibly for 20,000 or a doubling of riders with the same track length.
In Delhi metro, moving to a uniform system of eight cars per train would up ridership quite significantly.
Delhi Metro’s future projects be focused more on the city Centre, rather than out skirts, to increase ridership, reduce surface traffic congestion and improve the city’s air quality.

Source: Business Standard