If you ask yourself whether what Delhi Metro holds for Delhi can be termed as a love affair, you’ll end up answering ‘Yes’. The Delhi metro started its first run on 24th December 2002, and nobody then thought it would grow to become what it is today. It now has a footfall of about 25 lakh people every day. It might even be safe to say that every Delhiite has travelled in the metro at least once, and even enjoyed the journey. The Metro project has transformed Delhi into a city which looks befitting for the Capital‘s tag. The travel around Delhi has become much easier and much more comfortable. The Delhi Metro has become a part of identity of this city today, a part of this city’s culture. There was a time before the Metro when the blue line or the DTC buses dominated the city’s public transport. The auto rickshaws were too costly for daily commute, and the buses too dangerous. For this city, the Metro came as a savior. The travel by metro is cheap, comfortable, easy and most importantly, secure. A big disadvantage with the buses was their reliability. They had poorly managed schedules, which were highly ineffective because of the disturbed frequency of the services. This is an extremely rare problem with the Metro. The Metro network is completely computerized and centrally managed. The trains arrive at short intervals and chances of you getting late for your office due to a Metro’s timing are very slim. The revenue generated by the bus transport system was also difficult to monitor and DTC ran into losses for years. The government earned only a little from the taxation of private bus owners and hence this system was not able to improve. The Delhi metro runs with an approximate 2 crore INR profit per day, which goes into its development, maintenance and upgradation. Hence, this system is continuously improving as well. Another big problem with the public transport is that it was very unsafe, with the Delhi traffic and the way the bus drivers drove, you were between a rock and a hard place. With Metro now in picture, the government was able to slowly wipe out the blue line buses which were the main culprits of rash, negligent driving and accidents, and replace them with much better and more efficient low floor CNG-fueled buses. Today Delhi Metro has single-handedly changed the face of the city, and if asked, we bet that the people of this city will agree in majority that it has been one of the most influential tools of development of this city in the past decade.
