The Hindu Business Line : A tale of two Metros

For Delhiites and Kolkatans, the Metro is a "commuters' paradise", as it not only reduces the commuting time, but also provides respite from the peak-hour chaos of urban life.

Ritu Ahuja, a student at Indraprastha College in Delhi, says she would rather have flunked in her Plus Two exams. That would have saved her from the pain of travelling in the `U' Special or in Bus number 164 to her college.

Had she joined college one year later, commuting from her Rohini home would have been much easier, and after six months, she would have been able to travel in air-conditioned comfort right up to the doorstep of her college.

"By the time I reach college, I look like a zombie, especially in the monsoon months. It takes more than an hour of sweating it out to reach college. I also have to fend off uncouth bus conductors and road-side Romeos looking for an opportunity to rub against me. Once the Metro is ready, I will take a couple of minutes to the station and reach college in better shape in half-an-hour," says the student.

For Captain Rajiv Tomar, an officer in the Indian Army posted in Drass, a visit to his aunt in Welcome Colony turned out to be a pleasant surprise. An army bus dropped him at the Inter-State Bus Terminus (ISBT) from the airport, and instead of taking an auto, he decided to "try out" the Metro.

"I remember it took me nearly an hour through highly congested roads when I travelled by auto in my last trip, but with the Metro, I was there in 10 minutes flat. The cleanliness of the train impressed me a lot. In fact, I took two rounds of a joy-ride later in the evening," says the delighted officer.

Kolkata residents have already got used to this "commuters' paradise". The Kolkata Metro runs from Dum Dum in the north to Tollygunj in the south. This north-south axis is 16.5 km long and it has 17 stations, each station about a kilometre apart and is a boon for its users.

For those who have to visit places out of the Metro route, commuting in Kolkata, especially during the peak office hours, is nothing short of sheer hell. Potholes, road-side shanties, traffic snarls, political meetings and processions, the insufferable auto-rickshaws and the indomitable taxi-drivers, all play a significant role in creating chaos.

But travel in the Metro is another story. Arindam Mandal, a manager of UTI Bank, prefers to use the Metro Railway rather than drive his car. "You cannot be sure of your timings if you travel by road, even in your own car. But if the Metro is functioning smoothly, one can forget about the red marks in the office attendance register," he says.

School kids also favour the Metro for the same reason. In fact, in the early morning, one usually finds them rubbing shoulders with executives crowding the Metro.

Kolkata residents' pride in the city's Metro is legendary, and they ensure its maintenance and cleanliness with almost a religious fervour. Says Mandal, "The surprising thing is that the same Kolkatan, who spits to his heart's content anywhere and everywhere in the city, suddenly becomes the model civic citizen when he boards the Metro."

But it is not as if the Metro system is without its shortcomings. The saddest one being that the Kolkata Metro being used as a suicide point. While Delhi Metro has been able to avoid such a possibility by using over-head traction, the opportunity for those wanting to commit suicide on the Kolkatta Metro, comes from a third rail that runs along the tracks, which goes "live" when a train is approaching. There have been several cases of people jumping on the tracks to get electrocuted during this time. While third rails are used elsewhere in Metro systems, safety is provided in the form of double doors, which make tracks inaccessible from the platform.

One major handicap for both Delhi and Kolkata Metro is the footprint of the network. While in Delhi, the Metro comprises a single working line from Shahadra to Tis Hazari, with a 4.5-km extension to be inaugurated on September 30, the Kolkata Metro runs on a north-south axis.

The fledgling Delhi Metro will take another three years to become useful to a substantial number of users. The Kolkata Metro is quite useless to those who would want to travel from east to west. In Kolkata, there is no Metro connectivity with its twin city Howrah to the west, across the Hooghly.

The West Bengal Government, however, is contemplating an underground railway network, which would link Rajarhat in the east to Ramrajatala in Howrah.

The biggest criticism of the Delhi Metro was that the first section that was opened for public does not really cater to the typical Metro user. "Such a user is one who travels by chartered buses in the city. He embarks from a point close to his home at a particular time, and is dropped close to his office. The present section does not have many such users," says A.K. Bhattacharya, who works for a private company.

Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) spokesperson Anuj Dayal says that one has to keep in mind that only a truncated section of the Metro is open as of now.

"Once the full section comes up, it will become more useful to the office-goers. As of now, we have a substantial number of students and people working in the catchment area of the Metro who use the system," he says.

Another criticism pertains to the steep price of the ticket in Delhi — between Rs 4 and Rs 8 — for the small section that is open as of now. To add insult to injury there are reports that the fares will go up shortly.

Dayal says that at present it may be possible to pay less to travel in a bus running parallel to the line, but Metro fares follow the principle of "telescoping" charges, which means that as the distance travelled increases, the incremental charge decreases.

"Once we have a substantial section of the Metro completed, it would be cheaper to travel by Metro than by bus on many routes," he says.

But it is only in our country, that a metro system is such a novelty, says Dayal. "The world over, a metro system is planned much before the population reaches a million. All modern cities already have a Metro by the time their population reaches three million. Delhi's population has touched 14 million, and it is only now that the system is coming up in the city." The DMRC, he adds, is trying hard to make up for the lost time by adopting the latest construction technologies which include trench-less digging and using pre-fabricated blocks that bring down the time of putting up the system.

"The Metro represents the best of contemporary technology available anywhere in the world. It is for the first time in the country that such a system is being built. The last six months have been an experiment and testing phase for us and our confidence has been boosted by the fact that all the systems have worked satisfactorily," says the spokesman.

Delhi Metro's major critics, many of them who are in the Railways that run the Kolkata Metro, point out that the system could perhaps have done without such an overdose of expensive technology. There have been umpteen number of controversies on the "high price" of Delhi Metro, and many railwaymen believe that the system could have been installed at a much lesser cost.

DMRC Managing Director E. Sreedharan takes such criticism head-on. The 71-year-old indomitable fighter is quick to defend the Rs 10,600 crore tag of Delhi Metro saying that such technology was not available anywhere in the country and that one has to pay a price for quality.

Railwaymen say that the Rs 160 crore per route km cost of Delhi Metro is "unacceptably high" and cheaper alternatives are available within the country.

The average cost of a metro system of the type that is working in Kolkata would be in the region of Rs 35-Rs 40 crore per route km, including the cost of land, points out a Railways official.

Despite the high cost, DMRC is confident that it will become the second metro system in the world that would be able to operate without doles from the government.

"We are aware that Metro operations cannot generate enough revenues to sustain the system. We have taken steps to exploit the commercial potential of surplus space and that has already given us a substantial revenue stream," says Dayal.

Whatever be the cost, most Delhi residents are looking forward to their own Metro, while Kolkatans are saying, "Yeh dil maange more."

Picture by Ramesh Sharma

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