Orange Line

A white elephant that holds hidden promise

There is a certain smugness that envelops you while you are sitting in the air-conditioned bliss of a state-of-the-art train, zipping across the city at 60 miles an hour and looking down (pun intended) at the poor souls stuck in traffic on the streets below, traffic that on the best of days, crawl. Public transit advocates will tell you that all good grade separated public transit makes you feel the same way. Nah! Look, I am one of the more rabid (and the word has been carefully chosen) supporters of public transit, but that feeling of overwhelming superiority can only be felt in very rare circumstances. The Delhi Metro’s Airport Express Line (Orange Line) gives you that feeling, and in exactly pleasurable proportions, when it literally flies on its elevated section.

Connecting New Delhi Railway Station with Indira Gandhi International Airport’s international terminal (T3), the line is both outstanding and frustrating. Despite connecting two heavily used transport hubs, the line is almost always underutilized, with trains barely ever running to capacity. There are several reasons why.

Image Courtesy and Copyright- The Statesman

No connection with the domestic terminal (T1)

The train fails to connect to the domestic terminal (T1), which is used by most budget airlines. If it did, it would have undoubtedly doubled the footfall, at the very least, since more domestic passengers, with lighter luggage, would have been inclined to use the service. International passengers are more likely to have more luggage, and hence would still prefer a taxi or private car to drop them off at the airport. However, it must be said that the planners of this line had incorrect information about the future of Delhi’s IGI airport. Terminal 1 was supposed to be abandoned and demolished and all operations were supposed to shift to Terminal 3, which had been built oversized. However, as flying became more popular, not only did T3 prove insufficient, even T1 in its erstwhile form could not cope, forcing T2 (previously the dedicated Hajj Terminal) to be temporarily activated, while T1 underwent major expansion. As of today, all three terminals are fully operational, with T1, at the time of writing this blog, still undergoing massive expansion.

Connectivity with other lines

The line has ludicrous connectivity with other lines, barring Yellow (at New Delhi Metro Station-Northern Terminus) and Blue (at Dwarka Sector 21- current Southern Terminus). While these two do act as feeders to the line somewhat, the instances are very low. It does have a connection with the circular Pink Line at Dhaula Kuan. However, that interchange facility is pretty much a joke, needing a commuter to travel almost a kilometer with the help of several travellators. It takes anywhere between 15 to 20 minutes to travel the elevated path linking Durgabai Deshmukh South Campus Metro Station on the Pink Line to Dhaula Kuan on the Orange Line. Barely anybody uses the interchange. It has no interchange facility with the Magenta Line, despite the lines crossing each other near National Highway 58 near the airport. The Orange Line was constructed earlier. So, it was up to DMRC to ensure that the Magenta Line alignment provides an interchange with the Orange Line. Sadly, it was an opportunity lost.

The Line skirts Rajiv Chowk (Connaught Place), running practically under the current metro station, at a depth of 45 feet. Yet, for some strange reason, it does not have an interchange station there. If it did, it would have received ten times more commuters, even with the higher fares it had initially (fares today are lower than what they were initially), benefitting from a triple interchange with Yellow and Blue lines at Rajiv Chowk.

A line that caters to no domestic passenger!

Whoever planned this line, did so with very little understanding about the target audience that the line could attract. Flying is expensive. Even with a larger middle class who can afford flying, and the advent of no frills budget carriers, only a very small percentage of the population in India can afford to fly.

A large number of domestic trips taken by an average middle class person in Delhi-NCR during week days, are work related (look at your own flying record and it will start making sense), meaning, in an overwhelming number of cases, you are flying on your employer’s dime. So, it can be safely presumed that a large chunk of domestic air travelers on weekdays are/were business travelers (at least pre-Covid, and the line was constructed with pre-Covid realities). The other significant section of air travelers at any point, but especially on weekends, would be well heeled private individuals, especially immigrant professionals and students, who might be visiting their home states.

Now that we have established who flies, lets try and ascertain the one thing such a group would value most or the one thing that such a group would dislike most about flying from Delhi. If you haven’t realized it yet, it is TIME. You fly or your employer makes you fly, because time is of essence. It outstrips money in absolute value for these two sets of people. This is the group then that the Orange Line was supposed to target, at least I hope it was. Does it though?

The Orange Line originates at New Delhi Railway station. It is a perfectly sound place to start a line, that acts as a feeder to another form of transit. However, tell me how many times have you actually taken a long distance train, immediately after flying? People who fly, fly all the way from origin to the final destination. If there is no airport at their final destination, they will try and fly to the closest one. If there is no direct flight, people will take connecting ones through a major hub, which Delhi is. What they won’t do in most cases, is willingly change the mode of travel halfway through a long distance journey. Yes, you could theoretically fly in from Mumbai and take the Shatabdi Express to Kalka on your way to Shimla. But then why wont you fly to Chandigarh or even Shimla (Jubarhatti) directly? Delhi’s location ensures that it will very seldom serve as a multi-mode transit hub for anyone. The only subset of people who will make the journey to and from Delhi via train and then somewhere else via air are some international travelers, who in general carry excess luggage and hence refrain from flying domestic due to weight restrictions. I know very few, who would actually hazard a journey on public transit instead of hiring a cab with two large bags when going from the railway station to the airport. It is just common sense. Not saying people don’t do it. Heck, I do it! But then, I do it for the sake of riding trains. Not everyone is as crazy as I am. And even if all were like me, that would still be a very small percentage of people.

So, given that an airport express metro connection would be used primarily by domestic business travelers and well to do private individuals, who would appreciate a quick access to the airport, does this line, at any point, provide said access? Nopes! The line starts from a railway station, gives the one station that could have fed it maximum passengers a miss (Rajiv Chowk), touches an army residential area (Dhaula Kuan), has a station at Aerocity which only makes sense as a transit hub, which it is not, touches the international terminal at IGI, and a far flung suburb (Dwarka Sector 21), where it connects to the Blue Line. The line is now being extended to Dwarka Sector 25, where an international expo centre is being built. Barring a few days of the year, it is difficult to see how that extension will create more footfalls. It is truly a line that at present caters to nobody. A beautiful white elephant!

What Is Being Done and Can Be Done.

There has been proposals floated by the Haryana government to extend the Orange Line from IICC-Dwarka Sector 25 to Rezang La Chowk, Gurugram, where it will connect with the planned Rapid Metro Gurugram Loop. This is indeed welcome news, since it will create a much needed mass transit connection directly between South West/West Delhi and Gurugram. It will also connect Gurugram with the IGI airport and New Delhi Railway Station. Given that, Gurugram is New Delhi’s richest satellite city, it is home to arguably the largest chunk of regular fliers after the city of Delhi itself. So, it is safe to assume that the line will see significantly higher footfall if such an extension does happen. Now, I do not have any data in this regard; I doubt anybody does. So my presumptions are based on common sense, and a local understanding of social demographics in the Delhi NCR region.

Gurgaon-Fardidabad metro planned route, courtesy Times Of India

However, like many ideas, I find this planned extension a little undercooked. In case you have missed it, a metro connection is being planned to connect Gurugram and Faridabad, two important satellite cities of Delhi. The two cities are separated by a huge protected green corridor. So while the proposed line here would be almost 35 kilometres long, it will just have 12 stations. Now guess which other line is exactly like this, with large gaps between stations? Of course, the Orange Line! So, say the DMRC and Haryana government were to act smart and instead of extending the Orange Line just to Rezang La Chowk, it were take a giant step further and extend the Orange Line all the way to Faridabad? That ways, you do not need to build a new system at all; instead allowing a one seat ride to the airport for a new and significantly large chunk of possible fliers in the Faridabad-Ballabhgarh region!