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

Metros not meeting their ridership projections is not a Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR) problem alone

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