Delhi Metro’s second halt in two years weakens path to recovery

The impact of Covid-19 induced lockdown is being felt by Delhi Metro Rail Corporation for the second time, making recovery for the mass rapid transit system cumbersome compared to the other modes of transport.

Delhi Metro has been battling with reduced ridership even after it resumed services on September 7, 2020, after a complete shutdown of over five months.

According to DMRC Spokesperson Anuj Dayal, the average passenger journeys before a fresh lockdown was imposed from April 20, 2021, were around two million a day. This is barely one-third of the 6 million daily journeys during the pre-covid days in 2019.

In the absence of revenue generation due to the current and the previous shutdown, there is already an impact on DMRC finances. Besides, the rebound for DMRC to precovid levels cannot be ascertained at this point in time.

“Bouncing back to the same level can’t be predicted as long as the pandemic is still there and any kind of restrictions are in place for public movement to contain its spread,” Dayal said.

DMRC had resumed operations on September 7 last year as part of the Union government's permission under Unlock 4 guidelines. Following a graded reopening, it first restarted the Samaypur BADLI-HUDA city centre section of the services. The other lines were made operational one-by-one before the entire network of 400 km was thrown open to the commuters on September 12.

Many passengers shifted to metro for their daily commute since they were earlier relying on either bus service or the ride-hailing services, besides private modes of transportation. According to government estimates, DMRC'S daily ridership declined to 1 million from 5.7 million before the first lockdown in March 2020 was imposed.

The Delhi government in its fresh lockdown guidelines has shut metro services from May 10-17. Other modes of local commuting like public transport buses, autos and erickshaws continue to operate at 50 per cent capacity.

The metrics of daily average ‘journeys’ is being used by the DMRC authorities since mid-2018. Prior to that, the DMRC used to assess average daily ridership to count volume of traffic across its network.

In Delhi, the metro trains run from 6 AM till about 11 PM. The train frequency varies from two minutes and 44 seconds during peak time, up to 10 minutes in non-peak hours.