Delhi Metro celebrates its Silver Jubilee, completed 25 years

New Delhi (Urban Transport News): The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) celebrated Silver Jubilee ceremony on Friday, May 3 on completion of its 25 years foundation.  Vice President of India M Venkaiah Naidu inaugurated the function in Manekshaw Centre, New Delhi. Addressing a gathering at an event here to mark 25th foundation day of the DMRC, Naidu expressed concern that Indian cities have been witnessing an "undesirable shift" from use of public transport to private vehicles and urged all stakeholders to work towards promoting multi-modal transportation system to reverse the trend.

He suggested DMRC to now focus on boosting last-mile connectivity for metro passengers and take necessary action. Naidu said, "In recent times, our cities have been witnessing an undesirable shift from the use of public transport to private vehicles. The average two-wheeler and car ownership levels in metropolitan cities were 112 and 14 per 1000 population in 1994 and are expected to grow to 393 and 48 respectively by 2021. This would mean 53 million two-wheelers and six million cars in the next 15 years in metropolitan cities." Talking on the hazards of atmospheric pollution and concomitant health concerns, he urged all stakeholders in the transport sector to work towards promoting use of public transport.

He said that our cities need to increasingly focus on introducing multi-modal transit systems. Public transport should take precedence over personalized motor transport and every stakeholder should work in that direction. He further said that countries such as the Netherlands which has promoted public transport and facilitated use of cycles and other green modes of transport to ease pedestrians. The event was graced by Durga Shankar Mishra, Secretary, Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs and Chairman DMRC Vijay Dev, Delhi Chief Secretary and Dr. Mangu Singh, Managing Director of DMRC and other DMRC officials.

Addressing the gathering Durga Shankar Mishra said that currently about 657 km of the metro network is spread across various cities in the country out of which 410 km have been made operational in the last five years. About 802 km of network is under various stages of construction across the country. Talking about Delhi-Meerut RRTS corridor, he said that the distance of 82 km would be covered in 49 minutes spanning 16 stations. The work on it is underway. And, we are doing planning exercise for two other RRTS as well, Delhi-Panipat and Delhi-Alwar, and DPRs for these two projects are being made. We will very soon begin work.

DMRC was registered on 3rd May in 1995 under the Company Act, 1956 and its first stretch between Shahdara and Tis Hazari measuring 8.4 km was opened in 2002. Delhi Metro's current span is 373 km with 271 operating stations, including the Noida-Greater Noida Aqua Line, and its average daily ridership is about 30 lakh.