From Red Line to rapid rail, Delhi's transport transformation

When I first set foot in Delhi in the mid-nineties, I hadn’t imagined I would one day be living and working in what we call National Capital Region (NCR) today. Or that there would be no workday need to visit the capital unless one had to catch an outstation train or a flight. In the 30 years that I’ve been here, Delhi has transformed into Delhi-NCR. The ‘rajdhani’ of the 90s, connected to state capitals – including Patna, my home – by the eponymous premier train with its then cream and scarlet coaches, is today the world’s second-largest urban agglomeration by population (after Tokyo). It’s also at the heart of the Indian economic boom as satellite cities drive the rapid expansion of Delhi-NCR’s urban area. medium104650785On October 21, a day after its launch by the Prime Minister, I took my first rapid rail ride. The Namo Bharat train took less than 12 minutes to complete its 17km blitz across the only five stations to have opened for now on the Delhi-Meerut corridor.But it was long enough to illustrate the implication of a rapid rail.A year and a half later, when the full 82km corridor opens and trains complete the Delhi-Meerut distance in an hour, one won’t scoff at the idea of working in Delhi and living in Meerut. And down the road, perhaps both living in Meerut and working a corporate job there (and making a day trip to Delhi now and then to catch up with friends and family).This is the ‘rapid’ version of the ‘vikas’ (development) template that Delhi Metro made possible. If NCR is defined as a place that is within smooth public transport reach of Delhi – like Gurugram, Noida, Ghaziabad and Faridabad now – Meerut will soon be NCR too, as will be any other city, like Panipat and Neemrana, to which Namo Bharat is expanded (the PM has promised links to Haryana and Rajasthan).Building rapid rail is expensive – the Delhi-Meerut corridor costs ₹30,000 crore – but it represents the next chapter of evolution. In fact, the story of Delhi’s metamorphosis into Delhi-NCR cannot be told without its concomitant public transport changes.Like others of my vintage, my first taste of Delhi’s roads when I came here as a student in 1995 was on a bus – the Red and Blue Lines. Those were trying bus rides, but taught much – like patience and tolerance – and sharpened instinct, like the art of standing at angles to best protect oneself from deep encroachments into personal space in crammed buses racing along Ring Road and making dangerous overtaking manoeuvres (they became infamous for accidents). They also triggered my dust allergy, making me dependent on Avil. medium104650882 Memories of my time in Delhi played in a loop during my Namo Bharat ride, in a plane-like airconditioned, 2x2 cabin with upholstered seats that you can sink into and doze off. This was indeed a different era. As far removed from the bus rides of the nineties as the pagers that occasionally beeped in the pockets of my fellow passengers, and turned heads, are from the titaniums, flips and folds in the hands of my fellow passengers now (that don’t even draw a second look).Delhi’s big infrastructure changes that sped up the evolution of the megapolis began taking shape from the turn of the millennium – the DND Flyway in 2001 which brought Noida to the doorstep of south Delhi, the opening of Delhi Metro’s first line next year, the AIIMS flyover (2003), the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway (2008), and metro reaching Noida City Centre (2009), Gurgaon (2010) and Vaishali in Ghaziabad (2011). My first visit to the DND was a joyride hitched on a friend’s Maruti 800. “Makhan road hai (the road is smooth like butter),” was the friend’s assessment. We parked and stood by the railings briefly, watching the Yamuna. There was time to take in the moment since selfies had not yet been discovered. medium104651082It was Delhi Metro that really transformed the transport template. As the network kept getting extended, so did the sweep of development in Delhi-NCR, bringing Delhi and all its satellite cities into one common transport grid. It’s that grid that has sustained and nurtured the concept of NCR.Rapid rail will give it a turbo thrust. It’s exactly what the NCR, developing as an economic hub with Delhi at its heart and drawing migrants from across the country, needs as it grows in size and the housing market spreads. Because with Namo Bharat – depending on how its network is expanded, of course – distance will not be a concern.