On a weekday evening last month, Mumbai's southbound Aqua Line metro train nearly emptied out a couple of stops before the final one. The last station bore the look of a desolate Soviet-era structure rather than a bustling train terminal in a city where crowds typically jostle for space. Aqua Line is the city's new fully underground metro train connecting the old business district of Cuffe Parade to newer commercial hubs like BKC and the airport terminals in the northern suburbs. It opened last year.
The 33.5 km corridor was expected to ease congestion in India's financial capital and projected to carry nearly 1.5 million passengers every day. The actual numbers, however, are about a tenth of that, as per various estimates.
'Not a lot of people are using the line. It's too expensive,' a ticketing executive told the BBC at Cuffe Parade station. The low ridership on this corridor is part of a broader trend confronting the breakneck expansion of India's metro network.
Since 2014, the Narendra Modi government has splashed out over $26 billion on building metro connectivity across nearly two dozen Indian cities. The network has grown fourfold from under 300 km to more than 1,000 km by 2025. Average daily ridership has also almost quadrupled from three million to over 11 million people in the last decade. But these grand aggregate numbers mask worrying underlying data.
Most metro systems in India have failed to achieve even a sliver of the ridership projected during their planning stages, according to experts. An Indian Institute of Technology Delhi report from 2023 showed ridership of merely 25-35% of the projected figures across corridors. And these numbers are unlikely to have significantly changed over 2024 and 2025, one of the study's authors told the BBC. Other studies corroborate these findings. According to the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) think tank, ridership in some tier-3 cities such as Kanpur was as low as 2% of the projected estimate, while in the southern Indian city of Chennai it was 37% for the first phase.
Data shared with the BBC by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) also revealed actual ridership of between 20-50% in cities such as Pune and Nagpur in western India. Capital Delhi, which has India's widest metro network, is perhaps the only exception where usage has slightly surpassed projections. However, experts note that this is because Delhi has begun to count interchanges as separate trips.
So why has metro travel struggled in a country where car ownership is still low and other public transport systems are overcrowded and overstretched? It’s a confluence of factors starting with consultants often inaccurately projecting potential demand. It's a complex task, and figures are sometimes exaggerated to show the project is economically viable, says Varma. He added that forecasts were often made based on 'offered capacity' on the trains - such as a certain number of coaches, or frequency times for trains. In many cases these have never been realized.
For instance, in Bengaluru, peak-hour train frequency on the busiest line is five minutes or more, while on a newer line, it goes up to 25 minutes. Similarly, the number of coaches on many trains is only between three and six, whereas the busiest metro rail systems in the world typically operate with nine coaches and a frequency of a train every minute-and-a-half. Affordability, or the lack of it, is another important factor.
A single journey on the Aqua Line costs 10-70 rupees (£0.08-£0.56). A three-month unlimited travel pass on the local Mumbai suburban railway is significantly cheaper at 590 rupees. 'In Indian metro systems, the integrated journey cost can consume 20% of income for lower-income workers, above the global benchmark of 10-15%,' says Rane. Recent fare hikes in Bengaluru have also led to significant drops in ridership.
Other issues that keep demand suppressed are poor network planning and last-mile connectivity. 'People will switch to public transport only when waiting times are as low as possible,' Nandan Dawda, a Fellow at ORF's Urban Studies program, told the BBC. In India, a big problem is the lack of enough feeder buses to handle last-mile connectivity.
'Access and approach to and from metro stations to other destinations has to be convenient to support the use of public transport,' said Verma. As Mumbai's metro systems continue to expand, the challenges remain, highlighting a need for improved planning and integration to foster metro ridership across the country.
The 33.5 km corridor was expected to ease congestion in India's financial capital and projected to carry nearly 1.5 million passengers every day. The actual numbers, however, are about a tenth of that, as per various estimates.
'Not a lot of people are using the line. It's too expensive,' a ticketing executive told the BBC at Cuffe Parade station. The low ridership on this corridor is part of a broader trend confronting the breakneck expansion of India's metro network.
Since 2014, the Narendra Modi government has splashed out over $26 billion on building metro connectivity across nearly two dozen Indian cities. The network has grown fourfold from under 300 km to more than 1,000 km by 2025. Average daily ridership has also almost quadrupled from three million to over 11 million people in the last decade. But these grand aggregate numbers mask worrying underlying data.
Most metro systems in India have failed to achieve even a sliver of the ridership projected during their planning stages, according to experts. An Indian Institute of Technology Delhi report from 2023 showed ridership of merely 25-35% of the projected figures across corridors. And these numbers are unlikely to have significantly changed over 2024 and 2025, one of the study's authors told the BBC. Other studies corroborate these findings. According to the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) think tank, ridership in some tier-3 cities such as Kanpur was as low as 2% of the projected estimate, while in the southern Indian city of Chennai it was 37% for the first phase.
Data shared with the BBC by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) also revealed actual ridership of between 20-50% in cities such as Pune and Nagpur in western India. Capital Delhi, which has India's widest metro network, is perhaps the only exception where usage has slightly surpassed projections. However, experts note that this is because Delhi has begun to count interchanges as separate trips.
So why has metro travel struggled in a country where car ownership is still low and other public transport systems are overcrowded and overstretched? It’s a confluence of factors starting with consultants often inaccurately projecting potential demand. It's a complex task, and figures are sometimes exaggerated to show the project is economically viable, says Varma. He added that forecasts were often made based on 'offered capacity' on the trains - such as a certain number of coaches, or frequency times for trains. In many cases these have never been realized.
For instance, in Bengaluru, peak-hour train frequency on the busiest line is five minutes or more, while on a newer line, it goes up to 25 minutes. Similarly, the number of coaches on many trains is only between three and six, whereas the busiest metro rail systems in the world typically operate with nine coaches and a frequency of a train every minute-and-a-half. Affordability, or the lack of it, is another important factor.
A single journey on the Aqua Line costs 10-70 rupees (£0.08-£0.56). A three-month unlimited travel pass on the local Mumbai suburban railway is significantly cheaper at 590 rupees. 'In Indian metro systems, the integrated journey cost can consume 20% of income for lower-income workers, above the global benchmark of 10-15%,' says Rane. Recent fare hikes in Bengaluru have also led to significant drops in ridership.
Other issues that keep demand suppressed are poor network planning and last-mile connectivity. 'People will switch to public transport only when waiting times are as low as possible,' Nandan Dawda, a Fellow at ORF's Urban Studies program, told the BBC. In India, a big problem is the lack of enough feeder buses to handle last-mile connectivity.
'Access and approach to and from metro stations to other destinations has to be convenient to support the use of public transport,' said Verma. As Mumbai's metro systems continue to expand, the challenges remain, highlighting a need for improved planning and integration to foster metro ridership across the country.
