Delhi Metro
The Delhi Metro is a rapid transit system that serves Delhi and the adjoining satellite cities of Faridabad, Gurugram, Ghaziabad, Noida, Bahadurgarh, and Ballabhgarh in the National Capital Region of India. The system consists of [|10 colour-coded lines] serving 257 stations, with a total length of. It is India's largest and busiest metro rail system. The metro has a mix of underground, at-grade, and elevated stations using broad-gauge and standard-gauge tracks. The metro makes over 4,300 trips daily.
Construction began in 1998, and the first elevated section on the Red Line opened on 25 December 2002. The first underground section on the Yellow Line opened on 20 December 2004. The network was developed in phases. Phase I was completed by 2006, followed by Phase II in 2011. Phase III was mostly complete in 2021, except for a small extension of the Airport Line which opened in 2023. Work on Phase IV began on 30 December 2019.
The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, a joint venture between the Government of India and Delhi, built and operates the Delhi Metro. The DMRC was certified by the United Nations in 2011 as the first metro rail and rail-based system in the world to receive carbon credits for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, reducing annual carbon emission levels in the city by 630,000 tonnes.
The Delhi Metro has interchanges with the Rapid Metro Gurgaon and Noida Metro. On 22 October 2019, DMRC took over operations of the financially troubled Rapid Metro Gurgaon. The Delhi Metro's annual ridership was 203.23 crore in 2023. The system also has interchanges with the Delhi-Meerut RRTS, India's fastest urban regional transit system.
History
Background
The concept of mass rapid transit for New Delhi first emerged from a 1969 traffic and travel characteristics study in the city. Over the next several years, committees in a number of government departments were commissioned to examine issues related to technology, route alignment, and governmental jurisdiction. In 1984, the Urban Arts Commission proposed the development of a multi-modal transport system which would build three underground mass rapid transit corridors and augmenting the city's suburban railway and road transport networks.The city expanded significantly while technical studies and financing the project underway, doubling its population and increasing the number of vehicles five-fold between 1981 and 1998. Traffic congestion and pollution soared as an increasing number of commuters used private vehicles, and the existing bus system was unable to bear the load. A 1992 attempt to privatise the bus transport system compounded the problem, with inexperienced operators plying poorly maintained, noisy and polluting buses on lengthy routes; this resulted in long waiting times, unreliable service, overcrowding, unqualified drivers, speeding and reckless driving which led to road accidents. The Government of India under Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda and the Government of Delhi set up the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation on 3 May 1995, with Elattuvalapil Sreedharan its managing director.
Mangu Singh succeeded Sreedharan as DMRC managing director on 31 December 2011.
Initial construction
When the project was originally approved by the Union Cabinet in September 1996, it had three corridors. In 1997, official development assistance loans from Japan were granted to finance and conduct the first phase of the system.Construction of the Delhi Metro began on 1 October 1998. To avoid problems experienced by the Kolkata Metro, which witnessed substantial delays and ran 12 times over budget due to "political meddling, technical problems and bureaucratic delays", the DMRC was created as a special-purpose vehicle vested with autonomy and power to execute the large project which involved many technical complexities in a difficult urban environment within a limited time frame. Putting the central and state governments on an equal footing gave an unprecedented level of autonomy and freedom to the company, which had full powers to hire people, decide on tenders, and control funds. The DMRC hired the Hong Kong MTRC as a technical consultant on rapid-transit operation and construction techniques. Construction proceeded smoothly except for a major disagreement in 2000, when the Ministry of Railways forced the system to use broad gauge despite the DMRC's preference for standard gauge. This decision led to an additional capital expenditure of.
The Delhi Metro's first line, the Red Line, was inaugurated by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on 24 December 2002. The metro became India's second underground rapid transit system, after the Kolkata Metro, when the Vishwa Vidyalaya–Kashmere Gate section of the Yellow Line opened on 20 December 2004. The underground line was inaugurated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The project's first phase was completed in 2006, on budget and almost three years ahead of schedule, an achievement described by Business Week as "nothing short of a miracle".
Phase I
A 64.75 kilometer network of 59 stations was constructed in Delhi, encompassing the initial sections of the Red, Yellow, and Blue Lines. The stations were opened to the public between 25 December 2002 and 11 November 2006.Phase II
A total of network of 86 stations and 10 routes and extensions was built. Seven routes were extensions of the Phase I network, three were new colour-coded lines, and three routes connect to other cities of the national capital region in the states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. At the end of Phases I and II, the network's total length was and 145 stations became operational between 4 June 2008 and 27 August 2011.Phase III
Phase I and Phase II focused on adding radial lines to expand the network. To further reduce congestion and improve connectivity, Phase III included eight extensions to existing lines, two ring lines and the Grey Line. It has 28 underground stations, three new lines and seven route extensions, totaling, at a cost of. The three new Phase III lines are the Pink Line on Inner Ring Road, the Magenta Line on Outer Ring Road and the Grey Line connecting Dwarka and Najafgarh.Work on Phase III began in 2011, with 2016 the planned deadline. Over 20 tunnel-boring machines were used simultaneously to expedite construction, which was completed in March 2019. Short extensions were later added to Phase III, which was expected to be completed by the end of 2020, but construction was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was completed on 18 September 2021 with the opening of the Grey Line extension from Najafgarh to Dhansa Bus Stand. An extension of the Airport Line to Yashobhoomi Dwarka Sector - 25 metro station was later added, and it was completed on 17 September 2023.
Driverless operations on the Magenta line began on 28 December 2021, making it the Delhi Metro's first driverless metro line. On 25 November 2021, the Pink Line also began driverless operations. The total driverless DMRC network is nearly, putting Delhi Metro in fourth position globally among such networks behind Kuala Lumpur.
The expected daily ridership of the network after the completion of Phase III was estimated at 53.47 lakh passengers. Actual DMRC ridership was 27.79 lakh in 2019–20, 51.97 percent of the projected ridership. Actual ridership of the Phase III corridors was 4.38 lakh, compared with a projected ridership of 20.89 lakh in 2019–20. The communication-based train control on Phase III trains enables them to run at a 90-second headway, although the actual headway between trains is higher because of the relatively low demand on the new corridors. Keeping the short headway and other constraints in mind, DMRC changed its decision to build nine-car-long stations for new lines and opted for shorter stations which can accommodate six-car trains.
Phase IV
Phase IV, with a length of and six lines, was finalized by the Government of Delhi in December 2018. Approval from the government of India was received for three priority corridors in March 2019. Construction of the corridors began on 30 December 2019, with an expected completion date of 2026. The metro's total length will exceed at the end of Phase IV, not including other independently operated systems in the National Capital Region such as the Aqua Line of the Noida-Greater Noida Metro and the Rapid Metro Gurgaon which connect to the Delhi Metro.Construction Incidents
On 19 October 2008, a launching gantry and part of the overhead Blue Line extension under construction in Laxmi Nagar collapsed and fell on a passing bus. Workers were using a crane to lift a 400-tonne concrete span of the bridge when the gantry and a span of the bridge collapsed on the bus. The driver and a construction worker were killed.On 12 July 2009, a section of a bridge collapsed while it was being erected at Zamrudpur, east of Kailash, on the Central Secretariat – Badarpur corridor. Six people died and 15 were injured. A crane removing the debris collapsed the following day and collapsed two other nearby cranes, injuring six. On 22 July 2009, a worker at the Ashok Park Metro station was killed when a steel beam fell on him. Over a hundred people, including 93 workers, have died since work on the metro began in 1998.
On 23 April 2018, five people were injured when an iron girder fell off the elevated section of a Metro structure under construction at the Mohan Nagar intersection in Ghaziabad. A car, an auto rickshaw, and a motorbike were also damaged in the incident.