Delhi metro surpasses billion-passenger mark

The Delhi metro, which is fast becoming capital's transportation lifeline as its network expands, reached a milestone on Thursday, with over one billion passengers, which just a little less than the country's entire population, having travelled on it since it began operations in December 2002.

The Metro rail transportation system (MRTS) 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 the 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 Delhi Metro Rail Corp spokesman Anuj Dayal.

On 24 November, Delhi metro recorded its highest-ever number of passengers in a day during the India International Trade Fair (IITF), when about 10.29 lakh commuters used the services.

As the usage is far exceeding DMRC's own projection, with over 1,00,000 commuters using the Noida line daily already as against the projection of about 53,000 commuters for 2012, the problem of crowding in trains is becoming more and more acute.

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 25 December 2002 on a small 8.5km stretch between Shahdara and Tis Hazari.

The number of daily passengers was just about 35,000. Now, the network is about 90 km long, and this will increase further as more lines get commissioned in Phase II, which is nearing completion. The average daily ridership stands at about 900,000 passsengers.