Delhi Metro to Carry 1 billion riders in 7yrs

Delhi Metro, which is fast becoming capital’s lifeline as its network expands, has ferried over one billion passengers, which is about the population of the entire country. The MRTS system is on expansion mode before the Commonwealth Games and new lines are going to be opened now every other month taking the Metro to south Delhi, east Delhi, Gurgaon, Ghaziabad and Airport.

‘‘With the massive expansion in the last seven years, the number of people who have availed Delhi Metro services till date touched a record 1,014,955,894 on Thursday,’’ said a DMRC spokesperson.

On November 24, Delhi Metro recorded its highest-ever ridership during the India International Trade Fair (IITF) when about 10.29 lakh commuters used the services on a single day. As ridership are far exceeding DMRC’s own projects — over 1 lakh commuters are using the Noida line on date as against the projection of about 53,000 commuters for 2012, the
problem of crowding in trains is becoming more and more acute.

Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) officials say that new trains are coming, and from now, a new train will be inducted into the system every fortnight. Already, DMRC has got about 17 train sets of four coaches each for broad gauge and another 10 trains for standard gauge. The total order is for 131 trains which will all be delivered before 2010 end.

Delhi Metro began its journey on December 25, 2002 on a small 8.5 km stretch between Shahdara and Tis Hazari. The initial daily ridership was just about 35,000 passengers. At present, the network is about 90 km long and this will increase further as more lines get commissioned for Phase II, which is nearing completion. The average daily ridership stands at about nine lakh passengers daily.