Domestic terminal of IGI airport will soon be a Metro ride away

The four interchange stations — Janakpuri West, Hauz Khas, Kalkaji Mandir and Botanical Garden — will connect the upcoming line with four existing Metro corridors. Janakpuri West and Botanical Garden Metro stations will link the corridor to either ends of the Blue Line (Dwarka Sector 21 to Noida City Centre/Vaishali) in west and east Delhi respectively.

Commuters from Gurgaon, north and central Delhi will have to change trains at Hauz Khas station, while those in Tughlakabad, Lajpat Nagar and Khan Market can change at the Kalkaji Mandir station.

According to the initial estimates in the Detailed Project Report, the ridership of Terminal 1 station in 2016 is expected to be 66,405 commuters per day and is likely to rise to 97,184 commuters a day by 2021.

“The station will also have reversal facility so that trains can be reversed to facilitate better frequency of trains. The underground station will have five entry/exit points and two subways will connect it to the arrival and departure areas. Yet another entry will connect it to Mehram Nagar, an adjacent residential area. The fourth entry/ exit point will be near the police station building and the fifth will be just before the ramp to the departure area of the airport. The line is targeted for commissioning by the end of this year,” an official DMRC spokesperson said.

While the high-speed Airport Express Line had connected the city and New Delhi Railway Station to T-3, it catered only to flyers headed to the international terminal. The line had started out with exorbitant fares and several technical glitches. Once DMRC took over, fares have been drastically scaled down over the last year, with a ride from New Delhi station to the airport now costing Rs 60. It is still heavy on the pockets of regular commuters compared to the rest of the Metro network.