Metros in India have less than 50% projected ridership, says IIT-D report

India has a 905-kilometer-long operational metro network in over 20 cities, including the Delhi-NCR region, said the report

Don't want to miss the best from Business Standard?

Ridership on all metro rail networks in India is less than 50 per cent of their projected ridership, said a report by IIT-Delhi and Delhi-based think tank The Infravision Foundation.

In its report titled 'A framework for selecting an appropriate urban transport system in Indian cities', the think tank said that ridership of most metro rail systems in India is 25-30 per cent of projected ridership — ridership forecast as mentioned in the Detailed Project Report (DPR) which outlines the intended objectives of a project. The only exception was the Delhi metro, which has a ridership equal to 47.45 per cent of its projected ridership, it added.

"Metro systems operating in India have 25-35 per cent projected ridership. Since all benefits and revenue generation is dependent on the actual ridership, none of the systems have achieved the estimated benefits at the time of approval of the project," said the report.

Though the country's first metro rail project was developed by the Indian Railways and commissioned in Kolkata in 1984, large-scale network development began only after the opening of the first corridor of the Delhi metro in 2002. 

According to the report, India has a 905-kilometer-long operational metro network in over 20 cities, including the Delhi-NCR region. This includes almost 600 miles approved in the last nine years for Kanpur, Surat, Ahmedabad, Bhopal, Indore, Agra, Patna, Kochi, Pune, Nagpur, and Lucknow, among other cities.

However, as the report pointed out, the majority of these operating metro systems have not fulfilled their projected ridership targets.

"Even the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation [DMRC], which has India's largest network, has less than 50 per cent of the projected ridership," Geetam Tiwari, a professor at IIT-Delhi who co-authored the report told ThePrint.

The Parliamentary Panel on Housing and Urban Affairs also raised the issue of low ridership of metro rail networks in its report tabled in July 2022. The panel stated that the average daily ridership of the Delhi metro was 5.06 million in 2020-21, which was more than the 3.84 million required for the DMRC to break even.

"The ridership projected in the detailed project report is used for estimating all benefits and calculating economic rate of return. The break even ridership is the number of riders required to cover the operating expenses. Projected ridership is critical for reaping the maximum benefits and justifying the project's expense," Tiwari told ThePrint.

Meanwhile, DMRC officials said that the Delhi Metro has met the ridership target needed for a mass transit system in Delhi. 

"On weekdays, DMRC serves approximately 6.7 million passenger journeys — it has already exceeded the projected figures in the DPR. There have been some setbacks due to Covid-19, but passenger journeys are picking up now," a DMRC representative stated.

Aside from metro rail projects, the report further emphasised the need for a robust, reliable public bus transport system in all cities, including large cities with extensive metro connectivity, stating that most city dwellers' daily commute is "less than 10 km in length regardless of densities and incomes."

Even in large metro cities, including Delhi and Mumbai, the daily commute for nearly 35 per cent of residents is less than five km, it added. The report assessed work-related travel patterns in urban areas based on population, area and income to assess the demand.