Delhi Metro: DAR vs. LUD

How does one calculate a ride on the Delhi Metro?

A recent article in the Indian Express was hinged on this question, and it came up with a politically charged conclusion from a minister in the Delhi Government who said it was "Extremely worrying" to see a 17% drop ridership in the months of March, April and May, as compared to 2017.

So, what exactly is ridership? 

Ridership here refers to "Daily Average Ridership (DAR)", a metric used by Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) across its six corridors — Yellow, Blue, Red, Green, Violet, and Magenta. 

An RTI filed by the newspaper came up with the following data on DAR for three months in 2017 and 2018 for five corridors (Yellow, Blue, Red, Green, and Violet):

• March 2017 - 2.76 million; March 2018 - 2.2 million 
• April 2017 - 2.75 million; April 2018 - 2.26 million
• May 2017 - 2.65 million; May 2018 - 2.25 million

This alleged drop in ridership is important because DMRC had brought in a sharp increase in fares in October 2017, a politically charged decision that was strongly opposed by AAP, the ruling party in Delhi Government, which is also a stakeholder in Delhi Metro. DMRC has been clamoring for a fare review for more than a decade in order to cut dependence on government subsidies, and to be at least operationally viable.

On 29 May, 2018, a day after opening the entire Magenta Line (Botanical Garden to Janakpuri West), DMRC stopped using the DAR metric and started a new one called "Line Utilization Data (LUD)". 

Unlike DAR which was calculated based on the entry and exit made by a passenger at the automatic fare collection (AFC) gates, LUD logs only overall utilization data. Double-counting is avoided and a passenger moving from one corridor to another is counted as a single trip only. For instance, a trip from Noida to Gurgaon across the blue-line and yellow-line would count as one trip, not two.

It is unclear when exactly the LUD metric started getting used. If it started after the fare hike, this could easily explain the alleged drop in ridership in March-April-May 2018. 

Strangely, while the Financial Express says one thing, its sister concern, the IndianExpress reports the opposite. On 30 May 2018, FE reported "Delhi Metro had posted a steady rise in the average ridership, with nearly 27 lakh (2.7m) commuters taking the rapid transit network daily in February this year". Three weeks later, IE tells us that for the very same month - Feb., 2018 - ridership was 22.18 lakhs (2.2m)!

As expected, AAP, the ruling party in Delhi, is highlighting the latter to prove that the fare hike is driving people away from the metro. 

Regular metro users like me find it extremely difficult to believe this. Far from seeing a drop in commuters I see crowded trains even during off-peak hours. In fact, within a month of opening the Magenta line, it has become impossible to find car parking at the nearest OBS Metro station!

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LINKS & REFERENCES

* (30May18), FE - https://www.financialexpress.com/infrastructure/railways/dmrc-uses-new-count-metric-on-traffic-flow-doesnt-share-ridership/1187488/

* (21Jun18) IE - Metro ridership plummets 5 lakh - https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/delhi-metros-daily-ridership-plummets-five-lakh-as-compared-to-last-year-5226272/

Delhi Metro: Blueline Blues

Stranded: Delhi Metro Blueline

Is the Delhi Metro unprepared to cope with its own rapid expansion? How do passengers cope with sudden disruptions in the suburban network?

Things that you read in the papers, shake your head in disappointment, and then flip over to the next page. It takes a first hand  experience to jolt you out of the detached, disinterested way in which most of us go through the daily grind. I got mine today.

At 15:30 today, I went down the ITO station to a business meeting at Dwaraka Sector-12 . On a normal day this journey takes about 40-60 minutes and I was quite sure that I would reach in time. About an hour later, at Uttam Nagar on the outskirts of Dwaraka, the train suddenly stopped. For the next one hour annoucements on the PA system mentioned a "technical snag", and then about "disruption in electrical supply" which would be "repaired soon". At 17:45 the train slowly crawled to the next station.

By this time it was clear that I would have to reschedule my meeting. So I went down for a chat with the metro staff before taking a return train to Noida. "Oh, this sort of thing keeps happening", said the man at the turnstiles, "There is no way to predict how long the repair work is going to take...40 minute, or four hour, your guess is as good as mine!"

A fee passengers who had stepped out to look for alternate transport came back dejected. As soon as news of the network failure got around, the taxi and auto drivers had promptly switched to "surrge pricing", a nifty term for fleecing helpless people.

Nearly an hour later, at 18:30 the train came to a stop at Rajiv Chowk. There was an unbelievable mass of humanity outside the windows, and as soon as the doors slid open, commuters exploded into the compartment, and then, the doors would not close because folks on the outside just did not want to let go. It took a lot of coaxing and cajoling from the guards to get the train rolling again. The same scene was repeated at the next major crossing - Yamuna Bank.

I got out of the Blue-Line at 19:30, full four hours after I entered into the network.

DMRC is clearly under severe strain. The Delhi network currently handles an average ridership of 2.7 million people a day, of which the Blue-Line (the longest with 44 stations) handles a million passengers - 64 percent of the load.

Is there a pattern to the network failures along the Blue-Line? Is there a better way of communicating such failures to the commuters? Is there a more cost effective way of evacuating passengers in emergency situations?

DMRC has an active PR department but it needs to go way beyond issuing the usual press-releases. Disruptions like these present opportunities to prepare the city for bigger emergencies.

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LINKS:

* 27 June 2016 - http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/delhi-metro-blue-line-overhead-wire-fault-2880355/

* 4 June 2016: http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/snag-on-metro-blue-line-delays-services-in-delhi-2833522/

Delhi Metro Kickbacks - Whudunit?

Another corruption scandal has come to light. Once again it is a foreign court that informs us that bribes were paid to Indian officials for a project in India.

This time, unfortunately, it is Delhi Metro that stands on the dock. According to UK's Serious Frauds Office, Alstom-France paid Rs 52 crore over six years to win transport contracts in India, Poland and Tunisia. Between the period 2001-2006, Alstom had won  a Rs 255-crore signalling contract for the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC).

Details of this scam have been trickling down slowly over the past couple of months. Yesterday, we finally got a  rebuttal from DMRC. The venerable Dr. Sreedharan stated unequivocally that the "Bribery story hold no water". His point was that in his time, DMRC had sufficient checks and balances in place. "If at all bribe has been paid" Dr. Sreedharan pointed out, "It must have been to individuals outside DMRC with a view to siphon back the amount to individuals of Alstom Network, UK".

So who got the moolah?

Outside DMRC, there were two other key players involved - a consulting firm called Pacific Consultants International (PCI) and JBIC (now JICA). It is interesting to note that around the same period (200-2006), PCI has been indulging in activities that did little to enhance company credibility.

Consider the following -

* Viet Nam, 2003: In 2008, Huynh Ngoc Si, former deputy director of the Ho Chi Minh City’s transport department and head of a major Japanese ODA-backed highway project, was convicted of taking bribes in 2003 by receiving $262,000 from executives of Pacific Consultants International, which was hired as the project consultant.
* India, 2004: PCI lost a case to the Joint Commisioner of Income Tax who held it liable deduct tax to the tune of Rs. 3,26,99,128 for various financial years involved. PCI had been claiming tax-exemption for its expat employees in India without any legal basis.
* Japan, 2008: PCI was fined JPY 70 million (approximately USD 680,000) by the Tokyo District Court, and three former PCI executives were given suspended sentences of imprisonment for 18 months, 20 months, and 2 years, respectively, for paying bribes to Vietnamese government officials in order to obtain consulting contracts for a highway project also funded by ODA and distributed by JICA.

India is now sending its officials to SFO-UK to collect details on the kickbacks.

For the sake of Delhi Metro, let us hope that DMRC officials come out squeaky clean!

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REFERENCES:

* (ToI, ) -- Bribery Story Hold No Water -- http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Bribery-story-holds-no-water-Sreedharan/articleshow/44635674.cms

* http://www.talkvietnam.com/2014/04/rethinking-aid-and-corruption-in-vietnam/

* Soni, Anusha (BS-11Sep) - Bribe charges link Alstom to firms from Singapore, Hong Kong --  http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/bribe-charges-link-alstom-to-firms-from-singapore-hong-kong-114091100996_1.html
- Indo European Ventures Pte Ltd, Singapore and  Global King Technology Ltd, Hong Kong

* http://indiankanoon.org/doc/1477231/