By Namrata Dhamankar-Jadhav
I happen to visit the capital last week and also got a chance to have a trip in the life line of transportation in the city: The Delhi Metro. I had always seen and travelled (though less frequently) in the local trains of Mumbai and thought that nothing can be as fascinating as that and nor can anything be as sophisticated as the metros in London and the recently launched metro project in Dubai. But alas I was wrong; the Delhi metro did not leave a chance to fascinate me.
My journey began with walking down Pragati Maidan, where I was for a conference towards the nearest metro station; it was around 6:00 in the evening and I could see office crowd, students all rushing to catch a train to get back home. The station was just 5 mins away from where I was and I enjoyed walking by with my luggage (I also stopped on my way to have the famous Gol-Gappas of Delhi). I reached the station and go did I feel nostalgic or what;I was taken back to my days when I travelled in the underground trains of London. Information maps and route signage put all across the station caught my sight first. I then located a ticket counter and got myself a token for Rajiv Chowk, which was reasonably fared at Rs 10/- and a guide map with fares clearly marked in front of me for easy reference. I then walk hurriedly to catch by train noticing the elevator; for the disabled and senior citizens on one side and escalators and long flight of steps on the other.
Till now everything was smooth sailing, I then thought of the mad rush in the evenings and something I need to watch out for (my friend Devanik warned me there), but I was taken by surprise once again, the crowd had systematically organized themselves in lines to board the train and places where this wasn’t happening, there were security guards to control the crowd. The frequency of the trains was also seen to be good with trains arriving between gaps of less than 3-4 minutes. Once I boarded the train, the interiors, cleanliness and the overall ride was a pleasure to witness. Commuters were seen chatting amongst themselves, some utilizing the time to read a book or newspaper, some passing the time by listening to the ipod; making me realize that I was probably the only person on board who was experiencing this very experience of travelling in the Delhi Metro for the first time; while the rest looked veterans.
My overall experience was a great one and it’s good to see that so many citizens are actually being benefitted by this mode of commuting which is faster, cheaper and much more convenient than travelling by one’s own car. After I got down the metro, I had my friend pick me up and take me for dinner at Janakpuri and boy! It took us more than an hour to get there from Lagpatnagar station; which my friend’s wife mentioned would take about twenty minutes had we taken the metro!! The irony of the public transport scenario in the country is that we all praise and appreciate the available modes of transport and how convenient they are, but what doesn’t seem to reduce is the number of cars on our Indian roads. We need to adapt to this more openly and reduce the pressure on the infrastructure to have our cities and its citizens work much more efficiently.
Namrata Dhamankar-Jadhav is the Co- Founder of Whitespace, an environmental consultancy and she also works as the Campaign Coordinator, Youth For Policy & Dialogue.
