Rider count goes up, but no improvement in DMRC infrastructure

NEW DELHI: It's not just the Gurgaon or Noida lines of the Delhi Metro network that are crowded and tough to travel on during peak hours. Commuters travelling on the Mundka to Inderlok/Kirti Nagar corridor have a similar experience every day, despite having a daily ridership of barely one lakh. It's no better on the Violet line—Central Secretariat to Badarpur—where commuters complain of having to fight for space. The reason—in the past one year, Delhi Metro Rail Corporation hasn't added a single coach, forget a train, to either of these corridors.

Vidhuyat Sharma, a resident of Nangloi who travels everyday to Rajouri Garden, said, "I take the train in the morning around 8.30 am daily. It's so crowded that I have to leave at least one train, so that I can take the next one which hopefully would be less crowded. This is a daily problem." Much like Sharma, Rupa Gulati, who takes the train from Noida to Lajpat Nagar frequently, says that trains are usually crowded, especially during peak hours. "All the trains are four-coach trains, so there's not much space. When I travel from Noida, I get the eight-coach train which makes it less crowded. But on the Violet line, I am yet to see a single eight-coach train," says Gulati, who is a shop assistant in Lajpat Nagar.

According to Delhi Metro, there are only 18 trains on the Green line, of which all save one are four-coach trains. On the Violet line, there are 29 four-coach trains and only one six-coach train. The reason, said officials in Delhi Metro, is the low ridership on these two corridors. Incidentally, ridership on both these corridors has gone up substantially over the past year. For instance, the total ridership on line 5 was 8,48,895 in 2013 but went up to 9,70,032 by 2014. Similarly, on the Violet line, the ridership according to DMRC was 16,79,090 in 2013 but went to 19,48,516 during the same period in 2014.

However, the number of trains added to either of these two corridors between January and December 2014 was zero. According to Delhi Metro, the number of coaches on line 5 is a grand total of 74 cars or 18 trains while on line 6, the total number of cars is 122 spread over 30 trains. Both corridors have one six-coach train plying on the line every day. In contrast, daily ridership of the Mundka to Inderlok/Kirti Nagar corridor is 99,357 while that of the Central Secretariat-to-Badarpur corridor is 2.18 lakh.

The Green line consists of 17 stations including an interchange station covering a total length of 18.46km. This line is going to be extended further from Mundka to Bahadurgarh in Haryana in the future. The Violet line was opened in 2011 and is to be extended till the interiors of Faridabad from Badarpur side. It has 16 stations.