India’s Metro Rail Network is spreading at an unprecedented pace and is likely to surpass that of the US in the next couple of years to become the second largest in the world. Currently construction work is in progress on metro rail projects covering 986 Km in various cities. These include two new major Metro lines in Mumbai and Delhi which will be completed this year and thrown open to commuters for doing travel.
The country’s metro network boasts of a daily ridership of around 1 Crore and has brought about a transformational change with greater comfort, stability and security in urban mobility. Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the first 17-km stretch from Sahibabad to Duhai Depot recently by riding the Namo Bharat train on the route. The entire corridor is scheduled to be operational by 2025.
Currently construction work is being carried out on several metro projects across the country such as Navi Mumbai Metro, Pune Metro, Madhya Pradesh Metro, Kanpur Metro, Agra Metro, Meerut Metro and Surat Metro. A pathbreaking step is also being taken to decongest big cities with the rolling out of the country’s first rail-based Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS) linking the 82 Km distance between Delhi and Meerut.
