Everyone loves a metro, yet they are running empty. Why?
India’s Metro network has grown four times over the last decade, across 26 megacities and Tier 2 cities. Despite poor ridership and high ticket fares, why does every city aspire for a spot on the Metro map?
India’s Metro network has grown fourfold in a decade, but low ridership, high fares, poor planning and weak last-mile connectivity raise questions over whether cities are investing in the right transport systems. (Image generated using AI) ON A Sunday afternoon in April, 40-year-old Abhishek Kumar and around 200 other residents of Greater Noida West tied two ropes to the last Metro pillar at the Sector 71 intersection and pulled hard. They were trying to “extend the Metro line” into their neighbourhood.
The protest was organised by a homeowners’ group, Noida Extension Flat Owners Welfare Association (NEFOWA), to demand a Metro line in the area, which, it claimed, is underserved by public transport.
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“There are around 10 lakh people here now and at least 80 societies. All of us are stuck in traffic everyday while going to offices in Noida and Delhi and on our way back,” claims Kumar, who leads the NEFOWA.
At the protest by the Noida Extension Flat Owners Welfare Association.
Only days earlier, the Central government had rejected the revised Detailed Project Report for the proposed Noida-Greater Noida West Metro corridor. “Before every election, every Diwali, the government gives a lollipop to builders that the area will get a Metro, which then gets rejected,” he says.
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Around 90 km away, far from the heat and chaos of the protests, Arpit, a financial services professional who works in Delhi’s Connaught Place, steps into the chilled steel-silver coach of the Meerut Metro. He had taken the RRTS or the Regional Rapid Transit System, India’s first semi-high-speed rail service for intercity regional travel, from Delhi to Meerut, walked to the designated Meerut Metro platform in the same station and boarded one of the coaches.
“Earlier, three of my friends and I would carpool to Delhi and back. But ever since the Metro started in February this year (2026), I have been taking it. Office hours in the morning see some crowd, but otherwise, it’s so convenient,” he says, looking around.
Around 6 pm this weekday, most of the 60-plus shiny plastic-and-steel seats are unoccupied. Outside, the grid-locked streets, packed buildings and the usual jumble of the city look sanitised through the spotless windows. An attendant tells a group of youngsters not to swing from handles or click photographs.
Meerut is the latest Indian city to get a Metro system.
Meerut is the latest Indian city to get a Metro system — and, as the Greater Noida protests show, there are many more hoping the urban rapid transit system will some day streak their skies, deliver them from the chaos of their streets.
But beyond this rush for a Metro are uncomfortable realities. Most of these projects, especially the newer Metro systems, struggle with ridership and mounting debts. Besides, the high fares keep out a section of the population that is then forced to turn to less dependable but cheaper public transport.
Rush for a Metro: 1,100 km and growing
Over the last decade, India’s rapid urbanisation has been accompanied by a fourfold increase in its Metro network, from around 250 km to more than 1,100 km across 26 megacities, sleepy state capitals and Tier 2 cities. Another 900 km of Metro lines are under construction.
Though the Kolkata Metro, the country’s first Metro system and the only one run by the Indian Railways, began operations in 1984, it wasn’t until 2002, when the more modern Delhi Metro came along, that the Metro began to emerge as a symbol of what cities aspired for.
The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) — established as a 50-50 partnership between the Central and Delhi governments in 1995 — now runs 416 km of Metro, its network expanding beyond the capital’s borders. Funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) through flexible loans, the Delhi Metro adopted a hitherto unseen Japanese ethic, focusing on punctuality of trains, queue discipline, and advanced predictive asset maintenance digital technologies. Its sleek coaches and world-class stations offered Indian cities a template for a new, dignified model for urban transit.
The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) now runs 416 km of Metro.
Soon, every city wanted a Metro — and is getting one.
Giant tunnel boring machines now work their way through the innards of some of the most crowded and haphazard cities; giant machinery hauls spans and tracks into place; and an assembly line of Metro coaches is waiting to roll out of factories.
With the government sanctioning 6 km of Metro lines every month, India, at 1,100 km, is set to overtake the 1,400-km-long subway system of the United States, but is still far behind China’s 10,000-km-long network. According to government data, India has spent Rs. 2.5 lakh crore on building Metro coaches.
In a January 2024 statement issued in response to criticism of India’s Metro expansion, the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs said some Delhi Metro corridors handled more than 50,000 passengers during the peak hour in the peak direction. It calculated that serving the same demand with buses would require 715 buses an hour in one direction — roughly one every five seconds.
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The government statement pointed out that despite a relatively young network — more than three-fourths of India’s current network was conceived, constructed and operationalised less than 10 years ago — daily ridership across the country has already crossed the 1 crore mark, and is expected to exceed 1.25 crore in a year or two. “India’s metro systems have been planned and operationalised to service the traffic requirement of India’s urban areas for the next 100 years,” it stated.
‘Metro Man’ Elattuvalapil Sreedharan, the first Managing Director of DMRC, says India should adopt the model that developed countries have: start planning for a Metro when a city’s population crosses 10 lakh, and have a Metro system in place by the time the population reaches 20 lakh. “Metros in Patna, Jaipur, Bhopal and Lucknow are fully justified,” says Sreedharan, who is credited with planning and advising many Metro systems in the country.
Few things spell change and development better than the sight of a Metro gliding past rough and chaotic roads. Inside the coaches, the elements have little chance to disrupt, and the problems that regularly ail public systems in India — irregularity, delays, unreliability — feel distant.
Metro projects have become prestige projects for politicians and cities.
Talking about how Metro projects have become prestige projects for politicians and cities, Harsh Dhingra, a rail and Metro consultant and former Chief Country Representative, Bombardier Transportation India, says, “Local administrations and politicians desperately want a Metro network in their constituency to show ‘development’.”
The Indian Express found that of the last six state elections (West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam this year; Bihar and Delhi in 2025), in five, at least one major political party promised Metro projects, their expansion, or fare concessions in its manifesto. For instance, the DMK noted that it “was the Kazhagam government that brought the Metro Rail service to Chennai” and “continues to advocate and struggle for Metro services in Coimbatore and Madurai”. In Bihar, the BJP promised Metro trains in four new cities besides Patna — Muzaffarpur, Gaya, Bhagalpur and Darbhanga.
The empty coaches
Yet, critics of the Metro point to the poor ridership and the high capital cost to say Indian cities need to think beyond the Metro.
A Metro corridor typically costs Rs 200-300 crore per kilometre if elevated and Rs 500-1,000 crore if underground, against roughly Rs 100-150 crore per kilometre for a tram network.
Despite being capital intensive, most Metro systems have been meeting just 25-35% of the projected ridership, according to a 2023 analysis by IIT Delhi professors Geetam Tiwari and Deepty Jain. Delhi (met 47% of the projected ridership) and Kolkata (38%) fared relatively better.
Take, for instance, Bengaluru’s 96-km-long Namma Metro that began operations in 2011. It was projected to have a daily ridership of 18.54 lakh by 2020-21, the Standing Committee on Housing and Urban Affairs noted in a 2022 report, but even in 2026, the Metro has a ridership of just around 10 lakh.
Research by Tiwari, an Emeritus Professor at the Transportation Research and Injury Prevention (TRIP) Centre of IIT-Delhi, argues that the Metro is an efficient mode of transportation only for commutes longer than 10 km.
Bengaluru’s 96-km-long Namma Metro that began operations in 2011.
Her research shows that most city commutes are shorter than 5 km, for which passengers prefer other modes of transport since they have to factor in the time it takes to reach the Metro, the stops it makes en route, and last-mile connectivity (what it takes to get to the destination from the station). Even in a mega city like Delhi, the research shows, only 15% of the trips are longer than 10 km and 7% over 20 km.
Manvika Shivhare, a 29-year-old lawyer based in Lucknow, says most people she knows never use the 23-km-long city Metro to get round the city, preferring to travel in an auto or two-wheeler instead. “The Metro is useful for going to the Airport, for which it would cost Rs 70, while the auto would take Rs 400. But none of us uses it for our daily commutes, since Lucknow is such a small city.” Shivhare says this won’t change even with the upcoming 11-km-long Line-2, connecting Charbagh Railway Station and Vasant Kunj in Lucknow.
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Sreedharan says high fares are the main reason behind low ridership in most Metros. “Metros are obliged to keep fare rates high mainly to make both ends meet,” he says, a consequence, he believes, of the Metro Rail Policy, 2017, which places greater emphasis on the financial viability and sustainability of Metro projects.
Responding to a question on poor ridership, a spokesperson of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs said, “Ridership projections for Metro systems take into account several factors, including the city’s Master Plan and its future development potential. However, there can sometimes be a gap between the development envisaged in city plans and what actually materialises on the ground. Ridership is also significantly influenced by the density and extent of the Metro network. Delhi-NCR has the largest Metro network in the country… It may also be noted that ridership on many lines of DMRC has exceeded the projections made in their DPRs [Detailed Project Report, the blueprint that lays out the project’s design, costs, ridership and financial viability].”
Poor planning, execution
Investment banker Krish Sanghvi, 23, says that in Ahmedabad, the Metro does not serve SG Highway, the commercial hub of the city that’s home to offices and malls, or the university area.
In 2022, a CAG report noted about the Nagpur Metro: “The location of New Airport station was not ideal from the viewpoint of ridership due to sparse population in and around the station and also from the accessibility point of view. The average ridership for a period of 18 months from date of commercial operation (March 2019) of the station was only 47 passengers per day as against the ridership of 5,474 per day envisaged in the DPR.” The Nagpur Metro DPR estimated a daily ridership of 4.1 lakh in 2026; in July 2026, the figure stood at around 1 lakh.
Experts also point out that our cities and transport systems are structured in ways that do little to encourage people to switch to public transport — from low or non-existent parking charges that make driving more attractive to poor footpaths and inadequate last-mile connectivity.
Radhika Shenoy, 28, a working professional in Hyderabad’s Secunderabad, points out that last-mile connectivity is a major challenge when she uses the Metro. “Neither my house nor my office is close to a Metro station. So, taking public transport becomes more expensive than using my own scooter or hiring a cab or auto,” she says.
The 70-km-long Hyderabad Metro saw its ridership peak in 2022 at 5 lakh passengers daily; it now hovers around Rs 4.5 lakh.
Others say the problem lies in the very process of deciding whether a city needs a Metro. It typically begins with a state government deciding it wants one, an idea that tends to crystallise quickly, often before any formal study has been done, says a consultant who asked to remain anonymous.
“The 2017 Metro Policy requires evaluating cheaper transport options like buses, bus rapid transit and trams, before committing to a Metro, since it’s the costliest mode to build. But state governments typically creates a Metro authority and asks it — the same body that stands to run the project — to assess whether the city should build a Metro or not,” the consultant says, underlining how no Managing Director of a Metro Corporation is likely to conclude that the Metro isn’t the right call and recommend a bus rapid transit system instead.
Take, for instance, the Jaipur Metro. In 2017, just two years after Jaipur Metro operations began, a CAG report pointed out that Jaipur city, with a population of 2.3 million, was not directly eligible for a Metro rail project.
A CAG report pointed out thag Jaipur city, with a population of 2.3 million, was not directly eligible for a Metro rail project.
“Instead of preparing a Comprehensive Mobility Plan (CMP), Alternative Analysis and then a Detailed Project Report (DPR), the Government of Rajasthan prepared a DPR, a transportation study as part of DPR and thereafter a CMP,” the CAG report said, before giving a damning assessment. “Due to defective planning and hasty decision making, a financially unviable Metro system was introduced in Jaipur city.”
The Jaipur Metro saw an average daily ridership of 51,000 in its inaugural month of June 2015. As of June 2026, this figure stood at 53,000, and the Union Cabinet approved the second phase in April this year for Rs 13,037 crore.
The 28-km long Kochi Metro, going by its DPR, should have had a daily ridership of around 5.39 lakh by now, but averages around 1 lakh.
Loknath Behera, Managing Director of Kochi Metro Rail, which started operations in 2017, says the ridership projections in the initial DPR for Phase-1 were later revised to 1.5 lakh per day, a target they hope to meet in the next 10 months. “Greater emphasis is now being placed on multimodal integration, first- and last-mile connectivity, transit-oriented development and more realistic ridership assessments,” he says.
The Jaipur Metro saw an average daily ridership of 51,000 in its inaugural month of June 2015.
Queries sent by The Indian Express to representatives of the Metro systems in Delhi, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Nagpur, Jaipur and Chennai went unanswered.
Critics say the problem of ridership often begins with the DPR. Praveen Goyal, a Metro consultant who has previously worked across projects, including Kochi, Hyderabad and the Delhi-Meerut RRTS, says DPR projections typically build in assumptions — last-mile feeder networks and integration of various modes of transport, among others — that rarely materialise on the ground.
“Ridership models assume enabling infrastructure that governments and urban local bodies have not delivered. That makes it difficult to hold any single DPR consultant accountable for the shortfall, since the analysis was contingent on connectivity measures that were never built,” Goyal says.
Dhingra, the former head of Bombardier India, says a Metro project has to demonstrate it is financially and economically worthwhile for governments to approve it. “To cross the viability threshold for government funding or international loans, consultant teams face immense pressure to engineer a favourable DPR,” he says.
Large infrastructure projects often overestimate initial projections and underestimate costs.
On the allegedly faulty DPRs, the ministry spokesperson said, “Currently, international best practices are being adopted for ridership projections and forecasting. Further, to improve the accuracy of ridership estimates, MoHUA is considering the use of telecom/mobile data to further fine-tune ridership projections.”
Globally, too, large infrastructure projects often overestimate initial projections and underestimate costs, but these shortcomings are often overlooked in the name of the “greater public good”.
Like the 2017 Metro policy says, “As per global practice, urban transport projects, including urban rail, are treated as public projects which deliver public good. Therefore, appraisal of metro rail projects should entail economic and social cost benefit analysis.”
‘Build Metros now or you miss the bus’
Despite concerns over poor ridership, proponents of Metro networks argue that no other mode can match a Metro’s capacity on the busiest urban corridors.
“Tokyo was not built in a day, neither was Hong Kong, nor was Paris,” says Sandip Chakrabarti, who co-heads the Centre for Transportation and Logistics at IIM Ahmedabad, arguing that big-infrastructure investments have to start well ahead of time. “If we don’t start building Metros in our smaller cities now, they will be in the same situation that our bigger cities are in today and we would have missed the bus.”
Cities can develop and densify around the Metro.
He points out that it is easier and cheaper to build Metro systems in smaller cities early on, before they grow and get congested. “Cities can develop and densify around the Metro, instead of Metros being retrofitted in cities which have already developed in a haphazard manner. For instance, it is difficult for the Mumbai Metro to perform well because the city has not been planned in a way to feed the Metro,” says Chakrabarti, who is also the JSW Chair in Innovation and Public Policy at IIM Ahmedabad.
A 2026 working paper by Soumya Kanti Ghosh, Pulak Ghosh and Falguni Sinha for the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister found that Metro access helped households save on transport costs, reducing their dependence on private vehicles. This, in turn, made it easier for them to repay and prepay their home loans. The paper showed that in areas connected to the Metros, loan delinquency fell — 1.7% in Hyderabad, 2.4% in Bengaluru, and 4.42% in Delhi — with prepayments rising, too.
But the pull of the Metro goes beyond many of these tangibles.
Nishant, Coordinator at the advocacy group Public Transport Forum, says, “My research in Lucknow showed that a widely prevalent notion is: how can we question the Metro, because if not for it, we would not get anything in terms of public transportation. That notion needs to be punctured, but it’s not easy because there is little recognition for an alternative.”
Tiwari says the problem is not that governments promote the Metro, but that they do so at the cost of other public transport. “It’s not that we have to oppose the Metro, but we have to be very clear that the city will have to depend on a very good, reliable road-based system,” she says.
Experts say the Metro needs to stop being seen as a one-stop solution to urban mobility. It is a piece of a bigger puzzle, which includes buses, auto and e-rickshaws, footpaths and cycling lanes, all of which should be integrated physically and digitally, and feed into one another.
It is difficult for the Mumbai Metro to perform well because the city has not been planned in a way to feed the Metro.
Anna Nagar, a slum built on a drain in central Delhi’s ITO area, sits in the shadow of the Blue line of the Delhi Metro. Every few seconds, a train roars above Zubaida Khatoum’s head, drowning her voice as she talks about her daily Metro routine. “I would not have been able to get to work in Noida if not for the Metro,” says Zubaida, 21, who is interning as a OT technician at a maternity hospital, 17 km from her home, “Bus will be cheaper, but if I have to take a bus, I will have to go and stand at the bus stop at 6 am to reach the hospital at 9 am, and change two times. I reach in 45 minutes if I take the train. And I can come home after 9 pm because the Metro feels so safe,” she says.
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