When the Metro traffic projections go wrong; it is not just a Delhi problem

The computer age has allowed forecasting to percolate into almost all public policy decisions, leaving little room for guesswork. Weather forecasting has improved leaps and bounds as weekly weather forecasts today are as accurate as one-day forecasts in the 1980s. However, traffic estimates seem to be going awry in India.

A recent audit of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) shows that detailed project reports were way off in projecting ridership for Delhi metro. The actual ridership, for instance, of the four corridors of Phase-III of the project in 2019-20 was 438,000 — 79 per cent below the projected estimate of 2.1 million for the period. And the total estimated ridership of the entire Delhi Metro Rail Corporation operation was 51 per cent below the projected estimate for the period.

This is not the first time that the CAG has highlighted anomalies in the traffic projections, and further analysis reveals that DMRC has learnt little from its past mistakes. A United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) study from 2014, titled “Promoting low carbon transport in India: Case Study of Metro Rails in Indian Cities”, had found that the DMRC constantly underperformed, meeting only 20-25 per cent of the projected targets in the initial four years of operation. The DMRC had to admit this mistake in a 2008 CAG report. “The fact that transport modelling for ridership was not carried out accurately by RITES was accepted by the company (DMRC) as well as the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) before the Empowered Group of Secretaries in 2005,” the report highlighted.

In Gurugram, a report by Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Ashok Khemka revealed that projection estimates were off the actual ridership figures, and projections were inflated to extract more from the government.

Metros not meeting their ridership projections is not a Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR) problem alone. A Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) study in 2018 had found that most metros across the country were missing their projection targets.

The situation has not improved. A study by World Resources Institute-India published last year showed that most metros, barring Mumbai, were missing their projections.

Bengaluru metro, or Namma Metro, had projected daily ridership of over 800,000, but the actual ridership was below 400,000. With an actual ridership of 115,000, Chennai was one-fourth of its estimated projection of 600,000. So, was the case for Jaipur, Kochi and Lucknow.

The World Resources Institute (WRI) study emphasises the role of last-mile alternatives for metros not achieving their targeted ridership. But, an earlier study, “Analysis of Metro rail Project selection Bias with Principal-Agent Model”, by Vinod Rathod and HM Shivanand Swamy, presented at the 10th Urban Mobility Conference and Expo 2017, points to a selection bias by authorities. Mumbai Metro, the paper highlights, suffered from the problem of adverse selection, as the traffic data was produced by various bodies and was not cross-checked by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA).

This mismatch is also evident in road projects. The Bandra-Worli Sea Link has been a classic example. The daily commuter traffic was projected to be 125,000, but actual daily traffic has not crossed even half of the projected calculations in all its years of operation (it opened on June 30, 2009).

The other issue is cost and time overruns. Recently, a CAG report highlighted that the cost per kilometre on the Mumbai Coastal Road Project had increased from Rs 205 crore per km in 2011 to Rs 1,274 crore per km in 2018. The Bandra-Worli Sea Link was projected to cost Rs 300 crore, but it cost the exchequer Rs 1,600 crore.

India needs more coordinateon and realistic cost estimates to extract better financial returns from projects.