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Having a problem of plenty is desirable..however we need to see it a lil more closely:

Below are ridership from 2014 August:

So as can be seen the only two lines which are very busy is Line 2 and Line 3/4, that is the Gurgaon and Noida lines. The other 3 lines ridership is a trickle.

So the 6/8 coaches are also being added to the 2 busy lines.  Rest are still happy with 3, where even those run empty.

Noida does not have a direct rail line connected to Delhi, but Gurgaon has IR connectivity. A commuter rail line with much higher capacity would have been ideal to address mass transport with fraction of money.

Alas, our planners are totally blind to practicality..and are happy with jargons!

Just like the Bullet Train decission..

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@mandayamr - you have stated "Another example that comes to mind is what is the investment of the respective METRO corporation into solving the last-mile connectivity issue? Is someone assigned to work with the local municipal authorities to create & execute plans for each line/station?"

The answer to that perhaps lies in "now that ZipGo has been allowed into providing airport connectivity, shouldn't every Koramangala, Whitefield, Electronic city etc, and more importantly Namma Metro, too be having shuttle services (provided by the likes of ZipGo) feeding the Big-10 services (where BMTC can concentrate its efforts)?" - to read the full blog-post, click here.

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@Srinidhi - I don't think the 2014 Delhi Metro ridership figures can be cited any more. If I understand correctly, particularly during the odd-even experimentation days, all routes were as much jam-packed as the Mumbai local trains. As such, Metro very much has its relevance, particularly in mega-cities of our kind.

Well, whatever, that doesn't detract from the fact that Commuter Rail (Namma Railu) linking the city with the town-ships all around should perhaps have been accorded a highrer or at least an equal priority. Undoubtedly, Namma Railu provides for the most cost-effective way out of the city's congestion and related problems.

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The Delhi Metro carries an average of 28 lakh passengers per day, a far cry from the 15 lakh that the detailed project report for the second phase of the urban rail network had projected.

This year, new lines will become operational in the third phase, for which the project report had conjectured a ridership of 18 lakh. As the figures show, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation had underestimated the number of people its trains would carry by a big margin.

Is that the reason DMRC has been slow in adding new coaches to the overcrowded system? "At present, there are 221 trains running, that is, there are 1,352 coaches in the system," says Anuj Dayal, spokesperson for Delhi Metro Rail Corporation.

He adds that prompted by the surge in ridership with the extension into the NCR, the company had placed an order for 420 more coaches.Of these, only 80 have been delivered.

 

Metro claims 221 trains run every day , but in reality, only 198 do. The rest are confined to depots for maintenance. These trains make an average of 2,827 daily trips.The system is expected occasionally to take on extra load.

In August last year, Delhi Metro increased the frequency of trains during off-peak hours after the Delhi government pushed for more trains to accommodate crowds of commuters. This month too, it again increased frequency to cope with the higher demand during the road-rationing fortnight and so the number of trips escalated to 3,192. The impact was immediate: while ridership went up, there were fewer complaints of overcrowding because stations emptied at quicker intervals.

While running extra trains and higher frequency helped moved passengers speedily , these are not options that the corporation is keen to exercise. Any decision on continuing with January's measure to run each train on more daily trips has to be considered carefully

"Running the maximum number of trains has an impact on the maintenance schedules because it leaves little time to carry out proper maintenance of the rolling stock," said a senior Delhi Metro official.

The answer, therefore, is more coaches. But the situation is unlikely to change immediately . The procurement of the rest of the coaches ordered last year will be completed only by December 2017.The induction of the 340 coaches might help, but the needs are already stretched.

"Three trains are currently being converted from four-coach trains to six-coach ones on Line 6 (ITO to Escorts Mujesar) and a fourcoach train is shortly scheduled to be inducted on Line 5 (Inderlok to Mundka)," says Dayal.

The procurement process is slow, admit DMRC officials. The Delhi Metro, which has been trying to tackle the increasing ridership with higher frequency of trains during peak hours, says the conversion of trains with fewer coaches into those with higher carrying capacity depends entirely on the availability of coaches.

How much remains to be done is easily gauged from the fact many lines still carry four-coach trains. Line 1 (Dilshad Garden to Rithala), for instance, has 19 of 29 trains running with four coaches. Line 5 is another corridor with four-coach trains-of the 18 trains in service, 17 are four-coached. The corridors with the maximum number of eight-coach tra ins are the Yellow line (HUDA City Centre to Samaypur Badli) and Blue Line (Dwarka Sector 21to NoidaVaishali). While the former has 33 eight-coac ..

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/transportation/railways/delhi-metros-rush-hour-blues-wont-end-before-2017/articleshow/50611006.cms

So will METRO is sufficient for Indian METRO cities to serve public Transport  ???

Why Delhi is having 240 Kms of METRO still gets over crowded ??/

Will  Bangalore  learn the lessons from Delhi and Good things from Mumbai having multi modal Transport like Suburban Rail, BMTC Bus, METRO, Taxi and Mono Rail

I hope Govt officials and Politicans wake up to the mess of Delhi for Bangalore

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While the DMRC is correct to point out the problems associated with increasing the frequency of the services, what is NOT clear is what effort is being put to find solutions to those problems!

It is easy for me to say this, because I am not the one running the service. At the same time, I would expect DMRC folks to be open enough to ask for potential solutions to their maintenance bottleneck. It is very much possible that IR or London Underground or the Japanese, have faced similar problems and solved it. 

DMRC is largely funded by the Central Govt., and so are many of the other Metro Rail projects all over the country. All the learnings of DMRC, and of other Metro lines, in solving problems, should be consolidated into ONE central database, and available to be viewed by all the Metro projects - current and future.

One example that I can think of is the 4/6/8 coach issue per service. When does the respective Metro corporation start ordering additional coaches? What is the impact of the delay? What is the advantage of ordering X number of coaches to be delivered over Y number of years? Why not order such that P number of coaches to be delivered per year for the next 10-15 years? 

Another example that comes to mind is what is the investment of the respective METRO corporation into solving the last-mile connectivity issue? Is someone assigned to work with the local municipal authorities to create & execute plans for each line/station? Even if not, what are the learnings/best practices on this from City A vs. City B? What are the best practices that should be in the design of all current/future projects - parking space, cycle rentals (extending the low carbon footprint), TfL like bodies.

The key to the effectiveness of such a database would be a standardised classification, one that helps designers, problem solvers, to find good solutions, as well as share their own

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