delhi

Updated: Jul 11, 2017 11:43 IST

The Delhi metro system, which is overburdened, is expected to get some relief by September when new lines, under Phase III expansion, start operating.

The metro rail corporation, meanwhile, has also made elaborate plans to tackle the rush of passengers on its existing lines.

The DMRC will add over 200 coaches in its existing fleet in the coming days. While some of the coaches will be joined to make new trains, a majority of them will be used to convert six-coach trains on the Dwarka and Gurgaon lines — that carry about 70% of the total passengers — into 8-coach trains.

In 2015-16, around 55% of the total trains on the Gurgaon line were of 8-coaches. The number has risen to around 62% this year. During the same period, 35% of the trains on the Dwarka-Noida/Vaishali were of 8-coaches. That number has shot up to 70% in 2017. DMRC has plans to take the number to 80% on both the lines.

Till last year, 27 of the 60 trains on Samaipur Badli-HUDA city centre line used to be of six-coaches. That number has been reduced to 22 this year, while the corresponding number of eight-coach trains has increased from 33 to 38.

Similarly, on the Noida-Vaishali-Dwarka line, number of 8-coach trains has been increased from 25 to 50.

“In 2015-16, we had 1,340 coaches, which has now increased to 1,456. The number of coaches will further increase to 1,654 by next year. Majority of the trains will be converted to 8-coaches, but we will keep some 6-coach trains to run in sections where we don’t get much traffic,” said Sharat Sharma, director (operations) of DMRC.

As per a survey before the Phase III construction of DMRC, the traffic projection for 2016 was 27.30 lakh in a day.

“Six-coach trains can carry about 1,800 passengers, while 8-coach trains can carry over 2,400 passengers. By running 8-coach trains most of the time, we can clear more passengers,” said a DMRC official.

On the Faridabad-ITO line, DMRC runs 44 six-coach trains, and has no plans to change the composition for now. Similarly, no change is expected on the Rithala-Dilshad Garden and Inderlok-Mundka lines, where majority of the trains are of 4-coaches.

At present, Delhi Metro operates on six corridors. Two more corridors will be added in Phase III, for which the Delhi Metro has already placed an order of 486 coaches. The new coaches, however, cannot be integrated with the existing line.

The Delhi metro currently operates with a fleet of 227 train sets comprising of 100 six coach, 86 eight coach and 41 four coach trains, across its corridors.

In 2002, when the metro was started, the average ridership was 80,000 passengers a day, which has now increased to 28 lakh passengers a day.

The inauguration of the first stretch between Shahdara and Tis Hazari in 2002 had caused the ticketing system to collapse due to the line being crowded to four times its capacity. Around 15 years later, the same situation is playing out again with most of the Metro lines packed beyond capacity during peak hours.