India has 742 km operational Metro Rail lines in 19 Cities: Parliamentary Panel Report

New Delhi, India (Metro Rail Today): According to a parliamentary panel report tabled in Lok Sabha on July 19, 2022, nearly 742 km of metro rail lines are operational in 19 cities across the country.

Besides this, about 1,037 km metro rail lines, including 82.15 km Delhi-Ghaziabad-Meerut Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS) corridor, is under construction in 27 cities, as per the 13th report of the Standing Committee on Housing and Urban Affairs (2021-22) on the subject, 'Implementation of Metro Rail Projects - An Appraisal'.

The first metro rail stretch was commissioned in Kolkata in 1984 between Esplanade and Bhowanipur, covering a distance of 3.40 km with five stations under Metro Railway, Kolkata. At Present, 27 cities have either operational or under construction network, the report said.

Also, a total of 291 km of RRTS projects viz. Delhi-Panipat RRTS (111 km) and Delhi-Alwar RRTS (180 km) is under planning stage, it said.

"Metro project proposals of several cities, such as Delhi Phase-IV (balance three corridors), Kochi Phase-II, Chennai Metro Phase II, Bangalore Metro Phase-2A and 2B, Nashik, Nagpur Metro Phase-II, Thane, Pune Metro Extension, Jammu, Srinagar, Kochi Phase IA, Noida Metro Aqualine extension, etc, are under consideration," the report added.

Many more cities like Varanasi, Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode, Guwahati, and Chandigarh are aspiring to have metro rail system, the panel report said.

On Delhi Metro's ridership, the report said, "Actual Average Daily Ridership (AADR) of Delhi Metro was 26.14, 28.00, 25.86, 25.93 and 50.65 lakh in 2015-16, 2016-17, 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20, respectively, against Average Daily Ridership required for break-even of 16.07, 18.59, 16.26, 17.03 and 38.24 lakh, respectively, in the same years." Despite a lapse of more than four years, six of the 12 states where metro rail networks are either operational or under construction were yet to constitute Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (UMTA) as a statutory body, according to the report.

These six states are Delhi, Karnataka, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra (in Mumbai only) and Rajasthan, it said.

For Delhi Metro, the report said that "the process of setting up of UMTA has been initiated in September 2021. The proposal is under consideration of GNCTD (Delhi Government) for taking necessary action".