Mass Rapid Transit in India

[ritesh]

^^ Commuting routes don't always match the rail setup, unless we wait for people to move closer to suburban stations. What I mean is, just building on existing railway lines may not serve current traffic flows since the cities have grown without these rail lines being a part of their commute. The only exceptions are Mumbai, Kolkata and Madras, since they have running local trains for over 70 years. See the lack of crowd on MMTS in Hyderabad, when compared to the former.

As for metro-like rolling stock, Mumbai has new shiny toys imported from Bombardier and Siemens for this very purpose. They don't like the dull drab ICF inspired caterpillar like rakes. Never mind that these phoren trains initially struggled mightily with the Super Dense Crush Load (yes, that's an official term) on Mumbai WR evening services, and our ICF rakes shrugged it off like Bhim and sprinted ahead

I believe most if not all the rakes currently in service in Mumbai are of ICF. Few BEML are alos used, but those are of faulty design.

For more on this, read this blog, it has good info and inputs.
https://mrvcmania.wordpress.com/

Regarding gauge, I think there is some rule that all BG lines will be under IR administratively, unless exceptions are given, like on the Delhi metro. This is probably why the Kolkata metro is a zone of the Indian Railways, and runs BG trains. And that is probably why other cities decided to go with SG . Heck, even Delhi changed its mind, given that they were in a Trishanku situation to begin with. The first two lines are built to BG standards, but the trains are mostly SG coaches mounted on BG bogies. So they paid the higher cost for BG infra, but have to squeeze in SG space. Generally, we should have gone with BG metro lines all over - our population will mandate it in the future and except these Trishanku tracks in Delhi, others will face severe congestion and can do nothing about it.

I completely agree.....with the amount of population and congestion, higher capacity is the need of the hour. And this is a prime reason monorail will not be a success here.

[prashanth]

I completely agree.....with the amount of population and congestion, higher capacity is the need of the hour. And this is a prime reason monorail will not be a success here.

Land acquisition and construction costs are significantly higher for broad gauge vs standard gauge. It would be much harder for GOI to finance metro systems if broad gauge was chosen everywhere. If capacity is insufficient, more lines can be added wherever necessary.

That said, if IR standards were better, it could have built broad gauge metro systems all over India at lower costs, since we wouldn't need to import technology. But I keep wishing...

[ritesh]

I completely agree.....with the amount of population and congestion, higher capacity is the need of the hour. And this is a prime reason monorail will not be a success here.

Land acquisition and construction costs are significantly higher for broad gauge vs standard gauge. It would be much harder for GOI to finance metro systems if broad gauge was chosen everywhere. If capacity is insufficient, more lines can be added wherever necessary.

That said, if IR standards were better, it could have built broad gauge metro systems all over India at lower costs, since we wouldn't need to import technology. But I keep wishing...

See there is no need ape west and build unsustainable metro lines. What we have, we overlook that and go behind something that not possible or too costly.

Since ages, there is a proposal for elevated line over the existing WR lines, to be build by railways. That i believe will be 10 times cost effective and usefull for public at large.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_r ... d_corridor
http://www.railnews.co.in/oval-maidan-c ... d-andheri/

[Bade]

^^ Just $3 billion and we are still sitting on it with no decisions made after all these years. This should be done even before the Mumbai-Abad HSRL as it will have bigger impact both in the quality of transport and impression it leaves with visitors to the city.

[JE Menon]

Don't know if this has been posted before:

https://youtu.be/qjOpjfvC0rw

Kochi Metro progress.

[prashanth]

See there is no need ape west and build unsustainable metro lines. What we have, we overlook that and go behind something that not possible or too costly.

1) Alternative to metro is Suburban railway criss-crossing through the city. How would you build one in densely populated cities like Bangalore? What about the LA costs? Last time I checked, IR gave up on Bangalore commuter railway (on existing mainline tracks) citing lack of funds.

2) Other alternative is to let IR build mass rapid transit systems. IR's kolkata metro has always had problems from the beginning. Its rakes, signalling and infrastructure are outdated and are difficult to upgrade. About IR's Chennai MRTS, the less said the better.

So direct your angst on Indian Railways and past Govts of India for failing to come up with an efficient mass rapid transit template that can be implemented in our cities.

[arshyam]

Land acquisition and construction costs are significantly higher for broad gauge vs standard gauge. It would be much harder for GOI to finance metro systems if broad gauge was chosen everywhere. If capacity is insufficient, more lines can be added wherever necessary.

Not true. There is an extra cost, but it's not as much as its made out to be. Definitely cheaper than adding new metro lines because SG lines don't have the capacity. And benefits outweigh the initial costs, as the carrying capacity will be useful for a very long time (our existing suburban systems were built 70 years ago). India will easily double its commuters as we grow over the next 30 years, and SG rakes then will be felt to be woefully short, and we will wish we had invested in BG, given that we already have the know how and the standards evolved from IR's experience. I hope we don't end up adding more cars because the metros 'are too crowded' - we simply don't have the space.

SG is a classic case of doing something in a way because others do it, and not really think it through from our requirements. Frequent 'cost' based arguments were pushed, that SG rakes are cheaper as they are used WW and we can use the economy of scale. Without thinking that India's market will be large enough to make an economy of scale and reduce costs - I had posted earlier on this thread that Delhi metro's phase I and II alone needed almost 1000 coaches, and they are building a bigger phase III and planning the fourth! Will that not be an economy-of-scale? WRT metros, we have only scratched the surface - the key growth areas are going to the 1 million + tier 2 cities, and they are already starting on their plans. Pune, Kanpur, Lucknow, Nagpur, Indore, Surat, Coimbatore, Kozhikode, Patna, Amritsar, Visakhapatnam, Bhubaneshwar, Guwahati etc. will be the new markets (I have named only a few) beyond the ones in construction today, and even these will expand further.

[ritesh]

1) Alternative to metro is Suburban railway criss-crossing through the city. How would you build one in densely populated cities like Bangalore? What about the LA costs? Last time I checked, IR gave up on Bangalore commuter railway (on existing mainline tracks) citing lack of funds.

My friend cost of 1km of metro vs suburban rail is the barometer. Why cant we build upon existing rail & roadways? Using this method, cost of land acquisition would be little or none at all.

2) Other alternative is to let IR build mass rapid transit systems. IR's kolkata metro has always had problems from the beginning. Its rakes, signalling and infrastructure are outdated and are difficult to upgrade. About IR's Chennai MRTS, the less said the better.

That was done in complete isolation. We were re-inventing the wheel. Problem is we stopped at that and hence the current need to go for foreign technology.

So direct your angst on Indian Railways and past Govts of India for failing to come up with an efficient mass rapid transit template that can be implemented in our cities.

Yes... including the current state govt who are not taking decisive decisions.

[arshyam]

I believe most if not all the rakes currently in service in Mumbai are of ICF. Few BEML are alos used, but those are of faulty design.

For more on this, read this blog, it has good info and inputs.
https://mrvcmania.wordpress.com/

I think you meant Jessop rakes? BEML is news to me. Even the Jessop ones were DC rakes, IIRC, not the newer AC/DC or the pure AC. Yeah that's, a good blog, considering he knows the WR suburban section very well, but I would take his opinions on the rakes' quality with a bag of homemade salt , especially when it was about those of ICF. Let's just say certain long arguments in a certain forum.

The MRVC saga has shown only what we have long observed on this forum: imported kit cannot be used as-is in desi conditions. We have to customize them to suit or usage and market conditions. And Mumbai being Mumbai, apparently even the rain gutters on top of the doors need to be designed in a certain way so as to provide a hand hold for commuters . How the heck will Siemens design rolling stock for that? Or even ICF - MRVC messed up by not giving the correct design inputs like the above, and ICF was left carrying the blame for poor localised rakes. Siemens, of course got scot-free in the back and forth.

Long story short, we need to invest in design and development of rolling stock within India. The Railways' RDSO is not the answer. They are, for the most part, content to test imported locos/rolling stock for vibrations and set speed and load limits, and the associated standards. While that is definitely important - and I cannot fault them in doing a great job in setting IR's engineering standards - it doesn't serve the need for a proper design bureau that focusses on designing Indian rolling stock, locomotives, etc. Heck, given our heavy usage of trains, we should be an export powerhouse with our own Siemens, Bombardier, Rotem equivalents exporting to middle income countries at least. The current exports of old WDM-2 to SL or YDM-4 to Tanzania or Malaysia are just drops in that ocean.

[ritesh]

I think you meant Jessop rakes? BEML is news to me. Even the Jessop ones were DC rakes, IIRC, not the newer AC/DC or the pure AC. Yeah that's, a good blog, considering he knows the WR suburban section very well, but I would take his opinions on the rakes' quality with a bag of homemade salt , especially when it was about those of ICF. Let's just say certain long arguments in a certain forum.

There were Jessop on WR, but got phased out due to AC conversion. But CR is still using plenty of them currently.

I was referring to these rakes, which looks similar to Siemens, but have middle door closed in four coaches, as the part of EMU is located there.
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Dufjcv_hU7o/0.jpg - BEML rake
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/SN6IZy5Ew58/0.jpg - Semiens rake.

Kolkata suburban system has these rakes http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost. ... count=1153 , which the author believes should be provided for Mumbai as well.

The MRVC saga has shown only what we have long observed on this forum: imported kit cannot be used as-is in desi conditions. We have to customize them to suit or usage and market conditions. And Mumbai being Mumbai, apparently even the rain gutters on top of the doors need to be designed in a certain way so as to provide a hand hold for commuters . How the heck will Siemens design rolling stock for that? Or even ICF - MRVC messed up by not giving the correct design inputs like the above, and ICF was left carrying the blame for poor localised rakes. Siemens, of course got scot-free in the back and forth.

Be it Siemens or Bombardier, it is only the Electric propulsion which is provided by these companies, while other things were done locally. NID Ahmadabad was lead in design and aesthetics and all Siemens & forthcoming Bombardier rakes will be mfg by ICF.

Long story short, we need to invest in design and development of rolling stock within India. The Railways' RDSO is not the answer. They are, for the most part, content to test imported locos/rolling stock for vibrations and set speed and load limits, and the associated standards. While that is definitely important - and I cannot fault them in doing a great job in setting IR's engineering standards - it doesn't serve the need for a proper design bureau that focusses on designing Indian rolling stock, locomotives, etc. Heck, given our heavy usage of trains, we should be an export powerhouse with our own Siemens, Bombardier, Rotem equivalents exporting to middle income countries at least. The current exports of old WDM-2 to SL or YDM-4 to Tanzania or Malaysia are just drops in that ocean.

What the author is trying to convey is the improvements from one gen is incremental and does not help the cause of people.

[Bade]

That is not bad looking at all. Besides there are doors implies A/C too. Why allow people to hang out with no doors. It almost looks like the Delhi metro coaches.

[Bade]

WRT metros, we have only scratched the surface - the key growth areas are going to the 1 million + tier 2 cities, and they are already starting on their plans. Pune, Kanpur, Lucknow, Nagpur, Indore, Surat, Coimbatore, Kozhikode, Patna, Amritsar, Visakhapatnam, Bhubaneshwar, Guwahati etc. will be the new markets (I have named only a few) beyond the ones in construction today, and even these will expand further.

Hmm..in Karnataka I do not see Mangalore in the list, which is a reasonable sized tier-2 city with its own rush hour patterns even 30 yrs ago as I recall. A north-south alignment like in the case of Kochi will do wonders. Why is Karnataka ignoring this coastal city with a lot of potential and with a lot of similarities to Kochi.

[arshyam]

^^Bade saar, that's just my list, and I have said that I only named a few cities. It's not official.

And that photo is the new Kolkata rake, isn't it? Looks good. As for closing doors, there is a YT video of a train with automatic closing door under trial in Mumbai. But it will work only when coupled with AC, or too much crowd will only result in even more suffocating travel. They can perhaps implement it in non peak hour ops or the first class to begin with.

Ritesh saar, thanks for info, good to know. Any idea how involved were the NID and MRVC folks in productionizing the design? Going by the feedback, there were a lot of small fixes the Mumbai car sheds had to do, and this generated a lot of angst against ICF, and little attempt to look deeper.

[ritesh]

WRT metros, we have only scratched the surface - the key growth areas are going to the 1 million + tier 2 cities, and they are already starting on their plans. Pune, Kanpur, Lucknow, Nagpur, Indore, Surat, Coimbatore, Kozhikode, Patna, Amritsar, Visakhapatnam, Bhubaneshwar, Guwahati etc. will be the new markets (I have named only a few) beyond the ones in construction today, and even these will expand further.

Hmm..in Karnataka I do not see Mangalore in the list, which is a reasonable sized tier-2 city with its own rush hour patterns even 30 yrs ago as I recall. A north-south alignment like in the case of Kochi will do wonders. Why is Karnataka ignoring this coastal city with a lot of potential and with a lot of similarities to Kochi.

True saar. Esp from mangalore to udipi manipal route. The ksrtc is only now starting local bus service within city which is in nascent stage.

[ritesh]

^^Bade saar, that's just my list, and I have said that I only named a few cities. It's not official.

And that photo is the new Kolkata rake, isn't it? Looks good. As for closing doors, there is a YT video of a train with automatic closing door under trial in Mumbai. But it will work only when coupled with AC, or too much crowd will only result in even more suffocating travel. They can perhaps implement it in non peak hour ops or the first class to begin with.

Ritesh saar, thanks for info, good to know. Any idea how involved were the NID and MRVC folks in productionizing the design? Going by the feedback, there were a lot of small fixes the Mumbai car sheds had to do, and this generated a lot of angst against ICF, and little attempt to look deeper.

arshyam saar, I am daily commuter on the virar route. All my info was from www and other outlets incld newspapers. Last I read was auto doors were been tested for siemens rakes but not the bombardier ones due to tech reasons. The ac trains will have them by default. For ac train 8 coach rake would be used and on western line initially it will be till borivali. One way charge of rs 100. Now if you calculate distance wise churchgate to borivali is about 33 km. While for metro end to end fare can be increased to rs 110 while distance is about 20 km. The biggest grouse against icf is slow rate of production. Small niggles I supposed can be ironed out as they came.

[Bade]

There were private buses running those days in the city (M'lore) jam-packed. I had classmates whose family owned some of the private buses, and used to get free rides occasionally. On weekends sometimes, would run into my classmates operating on these buses helping out with the ticket collection etc. Wonderful town and was lucky to spend my high school years there, almost a second home.

Even the Panambur/Baikampady to the city center for a line would be a good beginning. Connecting with Udupi/Manipal would make it even better.

[Theo_Fidel]

Land acquisition and construction costs are significantly higher for broad gauge vs standard gauge. It would be much harder for GOI to finance metro systems if broad gauge was chosen everywhere. If capacity is insufficient, more lines can be added wherever necessary.

Certainly the cost should be considered. In Delhi though we have both BG & SG and the costs were not dramatically different so it has not borne out that way. If I were polite I'd say the experts are mistaken...
More lines means higher operating cost, means higher fares... ..Sure the non-trunk lines could be built to lower capacity but it is the trunk lines that are maxed out at present, so what now....

There is also no reason a BG coach could not be bolted to a SG bogie. This is what was advocated strongly back then. The loading gauge would have to be marginally larger but not much of a cost issue. However the veto power of one individual meant that a SG coach was bolted to a BG bogie in Delhi! This is sheer spitefulness IMO. In hindsight this has proven a poor decision and has set the trend for all the metros since. The chennai metro is designed for 4 coach rakes, max capacity 40,000 PPHPD. Not too far from a mono-rail system on steel rails.... ..we will come to regret this one as well...

WRT the Kolkatta metro we need to be a bit more charitable. One should remember the quite primitive technology that IR was dealing with back then. No private sector behemoth contractors existed back then like they do now. When a bid is put out for a metro these days, there are a dozen companies that pre-qualify and spirited bidding results with new technology and upgraded skills. Back then you would have got exactly zero.... ...personally I think it required a certain amount of courage to even attempt the Kolkatta metro, yes it was chaos but as a nation we learned a lot from it. The metro's these days are a success in part from all the mistakes made in Kolkatta.....

[Rohit_K]

Delhi Metro's contractor (HCC) has completed tunneling the Janakpuri West - Dabri Mor - Dashrathpuri to Palam tunnels on the new Magenta line. They started tunneling in early 2014 and made the 8th and final breakthrough in August.

map:





Info & more images on The Metro Rail Guy

[Vayutuvan]

WRT metros, we have only scratched the surface - the key growth areas are going to the 1 million + tier 2 cities, and they are already starting on their plans. Pune, Kanpur, Lucknow, Nagpur, Indore, Surat, Coimbatore, Kozhikode, Patna, Amritsar, Visakhapatnam, Bhubaneshwar, Guwahati etc.

Surat and Pune are tier 1.5 cities. Surat Metropolitan areas is the fourth largest bumping Hyderabad down to fifth and Benagaluru to sixth. We are talking about greater metropolitan areas in terms oif population and the geographical spread. Population density rankings are entirely a different matter. For example Hyderabad is not in the top 25 but Bhainsa, Dist. Adilabad, TS is. (I have a special connection to Bhainsa through my dad and hence I remember that small data point).

[srin]

See there is no need ape west and build unsustainable metro lines. What we have, we overlook that and go behind something that not possible or too costly.

1) Alternative to metro is Suburban railway criss-crossing through the city. How would you build one in densely populated cities like Bangalore? What about the LA costs? Last time I checked, IR gave up on Bangalore commuter railway (on existing mainline tracks) citing lack of funds.

Not necessary. The Metro as it stands - crisscrossing the city - is sort of useless for ITvity folks. Most of the IT companies are at the outskirts - Ecity, whitefield, ORR - along the arc of KRPuram to Silkboard (includes HSR layout, Sarjapur, Marathalli). And traffic to those areas in morning and in evening is atrocious - it takes two hours at peak hours for me to get to my office. Of course they are talking about Phase-2, but given the track record, it would take another 10 years.

And when I see the IR Bangalore map - http://indiarailinfo.com/station/map/be ... re-sbc/136, I see that most of the destinations are covered or nearly covered. International Airport - check, Ecity - almost, Whitefield - almost.

So - it stands to reason that it makes a lot of sense to have Metro re-use the IR infrastructure already in place and modify them as necessary. Build the local criss-cross when necessary but use the IR tracks where they exist. Which brought about the whole gauge conversation.

[prashanth]

Certainly the cost should be considered. In Delhi though we have both BG & SG and the costs were not dramatically different so it has not borne out that way. If I were polite I'd say the experts are mistaken...

May be you are right. But I've been following Bangalore metro construction for some years, and LA issues have significant delays and cost overruns. BTW, what is the capacity enhancement between a proper broad gauge coach vs standard gauge? You will be surprised to know that IR's Kolkata metro's BG coach at 2.74 m width is narrower than Bangalore metro's SG coach at 2.88m.

http://www.mtp.indianrailways.gov.in/vi ... 04,391,400

http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/ ... wMode=HTML

Not necessary. The Metro as it stands - crisscrossing the city - is sort of useless for ITvity folks. Most of the IT companies are at the outskirts - Ecity, whitefield, ORR - along the arc of KRPuram to Silkboard (includes HSR layout, Sarjapur, Marathalli)

Most of these areas are covered in Phase 2.

[Theo_Fidel]

So - it stands to reason that it makes a lot of sense to have Metro re-use the IR infrastructure already in place and modify them as necessary. Build the local criss-cross when necessary but use the IR tracks where they exist. Which brought about the whole gauge conversation.

It has proven almost impossible to get a block to work around the railway infrastructure. Despite the fact that metro work goes on around the clock with heavy road traffic underneath, railways is not willing to allow the same level of work on their ROW. Needs intervention from PMO...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

May be you are right. But I've been following Bangalore metro construction for some years, and LA issues have significant delays and cost overruns. BTW, what is the capacity enhancement between a proper broad gauge coach vs standard gauge? You will be surprised to know that IR's Kolkata metro's BG coach at 2.74 m width is narrower than Bangalore metro's SG coach at 2.88m.

Mumbai commuter super max is 550 persons per coach.
Delhi metro Super max is 300 persons per coach.

Of course we should reduce for adding doors, etc and not a straight shot but a rough comparison....

----------------------------------------------------------

Meanwhile things are getting desperate on the Delhi metro....
Of course the media has no clue of why this should be so, and does not know what questions to ask....

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city ... 891684.cms

Getting on the 45-kilometre-long Delhi Metro Yellow Line at Kashmere Gate is like carrying out a raid in a kabaddi game. People elbow each other as they struggle to exit from coaches even as commuters waiting on the platform barge in to occupy the tiniest vacant space inside. The ride on this line, from Jehangirpuri in north-west Delhi to HUDA City Centre in Gurgaon, is not easy.

As the train goes past the 34 stations and the three interchange stations of Kashmere Gate (Red Line), Rajiv Chowk (Blue Line) and Central Secretariat (Violet Line), passengers try all things to ensure they reach their destination in once piece. "There have been instances when I have stood on one foot for an hour," recalls Neha Taneja, 21, a trainee at Indiabulls, who travels from Rajiv Chowk to Sikanderpur daily. "It is bad," she adds.

Ila Negi, a 27-year-old who works at advertising agency GroupM in Gurgaon, has been using the line for three years now. "Not once have I ever got a seat in the general compartment on this stretch," she says. "At Rajiv Chowk, the coaches get packed to full capacity and after that one has to just stand. It gets worse in the evenings." Once in a while, she gets lucky and finds a place to sit in the women's compartment. That is when she tries to read a few pages of a novel to while away the 45 minutes it takes for her to reach Sikanderpur.

Join TOI campaign: Delhi, let's get moving

What frustrates commuters on this busy line used by lakhs of office-goers is the overcrowding. Vikram Jetley, 29, fights the crush at Rajiv Chowk every day to board the train for his advertising firm in Sikanderpur. "It's pathetic," he says. "They have increased the number of coaches from four to six, but the situation hasn't changed. The frequency is good but I don't know what else can be done to ease the crowding."

Perhaps it is because the line takes in some important landmarks along the way, Connaught Place being the main destination of most. There is the stop for New Delhi Railway Station too. Then there are Chandni Chowk and Chawri Bazaar markets also on this line. Many ride to Chandni Chowk to be able to reach the Old Delhi Railway Station. On the other side, it is at Sikanderpur that the Rapid Metro Rail of Gurgaon links with the Delhi Metro.

[amit]

WRT the Kolkatta metro we need to be a bit more charitable. One should remember the quite primitive technology that IR was dealing with back then. No private sector behemoth contractors existed back then like they do now. When a bid is put out for a metro these days, there are a dozen companies that pre-qualify and spirited bidding results with new technology and upgraded skills. Back then you would have got exactly zero.... ...personally I think it required a certain amount of courage to even attempt the Kolkatta metro, yes it was chaos but as a nation we learned a lot from it. The metro's these days are a success in part from all the mistakes made in Kolkatta.....

Theo,

You are both right and wrong. Right in the sense that there was a great learning from the mistakes made in Kolkata. Wrong in being very charitable to the construction gaffles which resulted in the inordinate delays when building the Metro. But the blame doesn't entirely lie with the IR, rather it lies with the Communist government of that day.

When the Metro was conceived in Kolkata it was divided into the South Calcutta stretch and the North Calcutta stretch. Both would meet at the Esplande station which was (roughly speaking) bang in the centre of the city.

Now North was/is heavily built up with narrow streets and rickety buildings. Comparatively speaking the South was much more open and a significant section went through the Maidan, which is a huge open field inside Calcutta. Since this was the first Metro effort it was decided to start with the South Line first.

This is where the politics came in. The CPIM stipulated - as it did with all construction work - that local contractors (code language for party cadres) had to given a chance to bid. What was done was that the mere 14 km line was broken up into "small sections", some of which were as small as 200 meters and given to the local contractors.

Due the lack of economies of scale, they actually used the open cut method, meaning the cut open the ground, with no tunnelling. Needless to say it was horrendous with Monsoon, no space for cars and the construction work was shoddy with several accidents. I was young then but I remember seeing the mountains of mud piled on the roads. Eventually after almost 10 years the south line was finished.

When the North line was taken up the IR, with prodding from the Centre, put its foot down and gave the entire section to the Hindustan Construction Company. The Left Front went along, I suspect, because they were scared of some massive accidents happening due to the close proximity of the buildings most of which were of second world war vintage. Long and short of it, even though technologically the North Line was far more challenging, it was completed in almost half the time it took to do the South stretch.

I think the biggest learning was that you have to give the job to specialist companies, this is not something you can make money out of by siphoning of money.

[prashanth]

Meanwhile things are getting desperate on the Delhi metro....
Of course the media has no clue of why this should be so, and does not know what questions to ask....

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city ... 891684.cms

Even the highest capacity mumbai suburban rail is super dense packed during peak hours making travel extremely uncomfortable and a bit risky. No matter what the gauge/coach width is, public transports if successful are destined to be overcrowded. No escape.
I would conclude by saying that the larger problem is flawed policy of our governments. A direct result of neglecting infrastructure in tier 2 cities making them unattractive for industries. As of today, in any state of India, difference in infrastructure b/n a tier 1 and tier 2 city is huge. This needs to be reduced.

[Singha]

can the number of coaches be increased beyond 6 ? in my delhi travels on the metro potentially there looked to be space to squeeze in 2 more coaches on the platforms by stopping the 1st bogie precisely where the platform ends.

[Bade]

Or they can introduce limited stop trains in busy stretches, where they get packed at certain entry points and empty up at certain others during peak commute times. This way they can distribute the load more evenly.

It has proven almost impossible to get a block to work around the railway infrastructure. Despite the fact that metro work goes on around the clock with heavy road traffic underneath, railways is not willing to allow the same level of work on their ROW. Needs intervention from PMO...

This may be due to safety aspects. The slow moving vehicular traffic at an overhead construction site has less chances of causing high injury mass casualty accidents, compared with a construction site over the rail tracks from a pure physics considerations only. Momentum transferred by moving trains is immense compared with even trucks moving at 100kmph.

[arshyam]

Fast trains won't be effective till there is some sort of loop facility to overtake a slower train. Otherwise they will only be as fast as the slow train in front, and actually cannibalize traffic from the slow trains (since they take the same path on the same operational slot).

Some of the congestion might reduce after adding alternative routes, but I expect DMRC to start planning some express corridors to address overcrowding in the long term. Only then will the battle against personal transport has a chance; I am sure a lot of people will revert to personal transport not wanting to deal with the crowd.

[Rohit_K]

Meanwhile things are getting desperate on the Delhi metro....
Of course the media has no clue of why this should be so, and does not know what questions to ask....

The Pink and Magenta lines should alleviate the load off of CP station in 2017. From 9 interchanges after the end of Phase 2, the DM will have 27 interchanges when Phase 3 ends. With that, commuters will have multiple options to choose from to go from one place to the other. Of course, no mention or footnote about it in the article.

can the number of coaches be increased beyond 6 ? in my delhi travels on the metro potentially there looked to be space to squeeze in 2 more coaches on the platforms by stopping the 1st bogie precisely where the platform ends.

The Red, Yellow & Blue lines can accommodate 8 coach trains. The Yellow line in fact only operates 8 coaches now. The Blue line is moving towards the same. The Violet & Green line stations have been built to accommodate only 6 coaches. The new Pink & Magenta lines will also have platforms to accommodate a max of 6 coaches, but with high frequency, it'll be able to move more people/hour.

[Rohit_K]

Images from inside Hyderabad's Uppal metro station:







more images at The Metro Rail Guy

[shaun]

for DM, crowd control will be through screens on the platform, that's what I read. is it so, how it works?

[Rohit_K]

Not sure how it will "control" the crowd. If anything, it would help to prevent people from accidentally falling onto the tracks, since the pushing/shoving slowly starts at big stations (especially CP) as soon as the train arrives. Once the doors open, that's when the pushing gets really bad.

[shaun]

If screens are employed , then it can have dedicated entry and exit points for each coach , and the exit points should be isolated stretch so that people ( who wants to board in) can barred from entering it. And the other is educating people about etiquette and discipline.

[Rohit_K]

They've placed arrows on the platform, yellow and red, to direct people to exit from the middle and enter from the sides for all doors. I believe announcements are made to first let people get off and then get on. To be honest, I'm not sure how dedicated entry/exit points on a coach would work and be enforced. Has this been implemented on any other metro network?

[Rohit_K]

Meanwhile, the Metro Rail Guy has posted images of yet another breakthrough at Delhi Metro's Shankar Vihar shaft on the Magenta line. The DDM has not covered these breakthroughs at all, so quite a commendable job in documenting all the breakthroughs.



Info & Images here: #TBT – Images from Delhi Metro TBM’s Breakthrough at Shankar Vihar Shaft

[Surya]

peak hour crowds are there in Tokyo and HK and Beijing too

at EOD some level of etiquette is needed and will need handlers to manage crush hour
screens are more a safety thing and an absolute must in Indian conditions

no matter what our infra will never keep up with crush hour

as long as outside of those couple of hours its reasonable its worth it (unlike mumbai where it seems to be super crush , crush and peak

[member_28609]

Meanwhile things are getting desperate on the Delhi metro....
Of course the media has no clue of why this should be so, and does not know what questions to ask....

The Pink and Magenta lines should alleviate the load off of CP station in 2017. From 9 interchanges after the end of Phase 2, the DM will have 27 interchanges when Phase 3 ends. With that, commuters will have multiple options to choose from to go from one place to the other. Of course, no mention or footnote about it in the article.

can the number of coaches be increased beyond 6 ? in my delhi travels on the metro potentially there looked to be space to squeeze in 2 more coaches on the platforms by stopping the 1st bogie precisely where the platform ends.

The Red, Yellow & Blue lines can accommodate 8 coach trains. The Yellow line in fact only operates 8 coaches now. The Blue line is moving towards the same. The Violet & Green line stations have been built to accommodate only 6 coaches. The new Pink & Magenta lines will also have platforms to accommodate a max of 6 coaches, but with high frequency, it'll be able to move more people/hour.

The highlighted part is not true. I travel on Yellow Line everyday. There is a mix of 6 and 8 coach trains. What they have tried to decongest is that they are now running some trains from vishwyavidyala to Kutub Minar station and others between Kashmere Gate to Huda CityCenter. This way the some of the traffic that is not coming into Gurgaon helps decongestion of the line.

[Singha]

I think soon delhi will need to build a third and fourth track to add to existing 1up,1dn on its major routes. underground , new alignments will have to be sought or in parallel to the existing.

mumbai WR and CR suburban already has 4 tracks right? heading into howrah from both ends, there also seems like 4 tracks to let the commuter trains run in parallel with long distance trains.

I forsee NCR expanding another 100km in all directions within the next 25 years...there is no geographical feature like the sea or hills to limit its growth.

bengaluru is also blessed with scope to expand on all sides, but the slumlord village level political elites will have none of it.

even if we extend by 50km from current NCR limits, then meerut, bulandshahr, bhiwadi, rewari, rohtak, sonepat, modinanagar will be engulfed by the metropolis. regardless of politics, all states around NCR are putting in place huge roads and are already major logistical and trade nodes. wherever there are expressways and fast metros, real estate will flow out along those corridors.

there will need to be a greenfield new international+domestic airport sited in between greater noida and ghaziabad under the UP govt. the planning for that should start now. the two will need to have the airport metro line extended to join in a express link over the 75-100km distance.

congrats to all delhiite members here. its great to be on the winning team!

[member_28609]

If screens are employed , then it can have dedicated entry and exit points for each coach , and the exit points should be isolated stretch so that people ( who wants to board in) can barred from entering it. And the other is educating people about etiquette and discipline.

Never realized that the tracks of Rapid Metro are so dangerous . They should have already installed screens. There is indeed a signage of danger mentioning high voltage; however I don't think many commuters know that the whole track is electrified. very risky I may say.

[Viv S]

[prashanth]

congrats to all delhiite members here. its great to be on the winning team!

In a fixed match though . Wish GOI extended funds and largesse to other cities as well.