Staying on track

By all accounts, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation has done a great job so far, especially in comparison with the only other metro project in the country in Kolkata.

While the Kolkata project still makes operational losses, the Delhi Metro's meeting its operating costs on the Shahdara-Tri Nagar section that was originally seen as a loss-making one.

Indeed, from 25,000 passengers per day when the section became operational, traffic has gone up to 80,000/day after the construction of an additional 4-km stretch between Tis Hazari and Tri Nagar.

As the metro extends to the more populous Rohini (next month) and Dwarka townships (by September 2005), passenger traffic should explode. The Kolkata metro, by contrast, has just 2 lakh commuters every day, against the 2 million that was projected.

Compared to the Kolkata project, which saw costs go up 12-fold in the 22 years taken to complete a 17 km stretch, the Delhi Metro has kept both costs and time over-runs under control.

At 40-45 people per kilometre, its staffing is a third that of Calcutta, and on par with international metro systems. Costs for the elevated sections of the first phase are $ 32 million per kilometre, compared to $ 56 million for the Bangkok metro.

But don't celebrate yet. For the only metro in the world that is profitable is the one in Hong Kong, and that too because over 30 per cent of its revenue comes from real estate development "" this figure is 20 per cent in Delhi right now, and expected to be around 12 per cent by the time the metro is complete.

Second, considering that around 2.5 million people travel on DTC buses per day, expecting the metro to attract 2.2 million commuters per day by the time it's complete is going to be an uphill task "" the Delhi-Noida toll road, to cite another high-profile project, is still struggling to get the traffic volumes that were projected.

At Rs 7 for an end-to-end journey, the metro's fares are low. Given the government's inability to get rid of other subsidies, this is an area of concern. More so when the costs for Phase II have already gone up to Rs 200 crore/km, from around Rs 155 crore/km in the first phase.