Poor planning and execution can haunt even the most ambitious and visionary infrastructural projects. Whereas urban mass transit rail systems are revolutionizing daily commutes in many Indian metropolitan cities today, as is evident from the expansive metro networks in Delhi and other cities, there have been instances when at least some mass transit urban rail projects have either failed to transform into feasible ventures or have turned into white elephants.  

The case of the Chennai's Mass Rapid Transit System (MRTS) and Delhi’s Airport Express Metro Line stand out as two glaring examples of how turnkey infrastructure projects can fail or run into losses despite their sound financial potential and feasibility. That these two ill-fated mass rapid urban rail systems co-exist with successfully functioning tube/metro services in these two cities underlines the planning and execution problems that might be at the core of their problems.

I - Chennai MRTS: not living up to the potential 

That even a spectacular infrastructure project that looks promising and feasible on the design table can turn out into a white elephant is best exemplified by the Chennai MRTS. The project, which had many firsts to its credit, also had the potential to be a template model for mass rapid rail systems in India and the third world, much before the metro services began to gain traction in the country. 

The MRTS was conceived in the late 1980s as a model urban rail network and the first elevated line in the country, a model that the Delhi Metro and other metros subsequently emulated. Proposed in 1983-84 as a Ministry of Railways project with full funding by the Government of India, the MRTS was supposed to cater to a city which, like Mumbai and Delhi, was relying on the sub-urban railway to connect its mofussil areas with the city centre. 

The first phase of the project, from Chennai Beach to Thirumylai for a length of 8.55 km, cost close to Rs 300 crores and more than a decade to build with the first stretch of Phase I opening in 1995. Largely raised over the much-polluted Cooum River, Phase I had 5.80 km as an elevated line and 2.75 on the surface. But despite creating some form of north-south connectivity for the Chennai metropolitan area through its eastern periphery and passing through some of the congested as well as upscale areas of Chennai, the MRTS failed to muster public interest and support from the Phase I stage itself. 

The Phase II of MRTS, intended to expand the line to Velachery, was in the planning stage from the late 1980s though actual construction starting only in 1997-98. As a jointly funded phase between the Government of India and the Tamil Nadu government, Phase II cost more than 912 crores and was commissioned in two phases – Thirumaylai to Thiruvanmiyur in 2004 and up to Velachery in 2007. 

Despite failing to generate mass public interest, probably owing to its eastern alignment, it was decided to extend Phase II to St. Thomas Mount in order to connect with the arterial Mount Road, which carried the bulk of Chennai city’s traffic. The extension to St. Thomas Mount was to cost over Rs 700 crores and was proposed to be constructed on single pillars, again through joint funding of both the central and state government. 

The extension to St. Thomas Mount could enable MRTS to cover a total distance of 24.72 km. However, the significant aspect of this extension is that MRTS will integrate with the fast-fledging Chennai Metro Rail and the Suburban rail system at the St. Thomas Mount point. This integration will facilitate a comprehensive urban rail network that will cover the whole of Chennai city and its suburbs, in the process, allowing the MRTS to fulfil its original purpose of mass transit and attain financial viability. However, the extension work has been much delayed due to, among other reasons, local opposition to land acquisition reportedly owing to changes from its original alignment plan.  

Why did a mass urban rail transit system, which was conceived well in advance by taking into account the population growth of a fledging metropolis and with the potential to cater to over 6 lakh passengers every day, fail to garner public support and mass usage even after 20 years of operations? 

Many factors have been cited for the failure, tepid response or below-than-expected utilisation of the MRTS, whichever we put it. Some reports attributed the desolated location of stations, including proximity to slums that lined up along the Cooum, lack of proper access to the stations causing safety hazards to commuters and the absence of interconnectivity with other modes of transport as among the reasons for such apathy by the populace of Chennai. 

A plan that missed the vitals

While these are matters of perception and localized facilitation issues, two key reasons could be identified as to why the MRTS failed to muster ridership. 

(a) Eastern alignment as a disadvantage: the predominant layout of the MRTS network on the eastern periphery of Chennai city, almost lines up with the coastline, as a result of which the denser and mobility-demanding parts of the city did not benefit from its existence. Considering that the bulk of the city’s traffic, administrative establishments and commercial entities were located along the arterial Anna Salai/Mount Road, the impact of the MRTS failed to reach these city centres in both phases. 

On the other hand, building the MRTS along the Anna Salai/Mount Road could have been a costlier endeavour considering the huge land acquisition involved, even in the 1980s, and the probable reason why the polluted and stagnant Cooum River was chosen as the terrain to host the elevated pathway. 

(b) Too short a line:  When the MRTS was first operationalized in 1995, the first line was a short route from Chennai Beach to Chepauk, a distance of hardly 5 km and through a least populated area with some government offices, a university campus and a cricket stadium as the key landmarks on the routes. The same trend repeated through Phase I which had covered only a handful of residential localities, like Triplicane, with stations atop the Cooum River. 

It was only in the second phase that the MRTS touched more populous regions like Adayar, Mandaveli, Thiruvanmayur, and so on, and provided a connection with the IT corridor in the Taramani-Velachery stretch. By then, the Chennai metropolitan area itself had massively expanded both southwards and westwards, which caused the MRTS to be seen as a privileged marvel confined to the eastern nook of the city. 

The extension to St. Thomas Mount, thus, not just provides the panacea from the existential crises that the MRTS has faced for over three decades and hopes that its integration with the Metro and suburban rail systems will give it a fresh lease of life and could also lead to a circular urban rail system that could have touched all prominent zones of Chennai.  

II - Delhi Airport Line: a case of flawed planning and missed opportunities? 

What was supposed to be a signature and exquisite metro line dedicated to the transit of airline passengers, and emerge as a showcase for not just India but the whole region, ended up a huge white elephant, even if not due to performance failures. The arbitral liability of Rs 8000 crore hanging like a Damocles Sword now threatens to drown its owner, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), to a deep financial abyss if not a death knell.   

The inspiration for the Delhi Airport Metro Line came from major metropolises around the world, including London, Frankfurt, Vienna, Zurich and so on, as well as their Asian peers like Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, etc., where international airports on the outskirts are connected to the city centre by rapid metro/tube lines, most often positioned below the airport premises. 

Interestingly, when the contract was being inked for the Delhi Airport link between the DMRC and the Reliance Infra-owned Delhi Airport Metro Express Private Ltd (DAMEPL) in 2008, even the Washington Dulles Airport did not have a similar metro connection of its own (with its Silver Line Extension connecting the airport to DC opening only in 2022).

The 2008 agreement to set up the airport link, envisaged to be ready by the time of the Commonwealth Games in 2010, was through a unique public-private partnership (PPP) model. Accordingly, the DMRC, owned by the Government of India and the Delhi Government, was to undertake all the civil constructions (including viaducts, tunnels and the stations) while the private partner, DAEMPL was to provide for the systems including tracks, signals, depot and overall running and maintenance of the 22-km long network for 30 years. 

Being a dedicated line, DMRC planners conceived it as a stand-alone airport-to-city centre link that will not be exposed to the crowds and commotion that the main Delhi metro network was then fledging into. Accordingly, the DMRC did the blunder of designing the route through the shortest length possible with a minimal number of stations and no interchange facilities with the main metro line other than at the New Delhi Railway Station. The interchange at the New Delhi station, for that matter, involved a lengthy walk stretching close to a kilometre and dissuading daily commuters from considering the airport line as a transit option.

An ill-conceived contract that backfired: However, the ill-fated airport line’s nemesis proved to be not only these planning and design issues but also engineering defects and the choice of a private partner who apparently sensed a lack of financial promise in the project and exited at the first opportunity from the agreement that should have lasted 30 years. 

While the line missed the Commonwealth Games target and opened for operations only in 2011, to largely empty coaches, DAEMPL stopped operations in May 2012 after finding structural defects in the viaduct. Though the DMRC rectified the defects and the Commissioner of Metro Rail Safety cleared the line for operation in January 2013, DAMEPL, nonetheless, gave up the project in June 2013, apparently over the poor footfall. 

With the DAEMPL exiting the contract, DMRC took over the Airport Line and approached the arbitration tribunal, which, in 2017, however, ruled in favour of DAEMPL asking DMRC to pay Rs 2792.83 crores to the former. The matter then went through a long phase of litigations, first in the Delhi High Court, where a single bench upheld the tribunal’s award followed by a division bench setting it aside by terming it as irrational and being “in conflict with the public policy of India.” 

The matter, eventually, reached the Supreme Court, which, maintained that the tribunal’s award, as per the Arbitration and Reconciliation Act 1996, cannot be challenged or overruled albeit the DMRC had approached the apex court with a curative petition. 

By 2021, close to 8 years after exiting from the contract and over 4 years after the tribunal’s award, DAEMPL claimed that DMRC owed over Rs 7000 crore, with interest accumulated on the original award. The DMRC, meanwhile, is known to have paid only Rs 1000 crore while claiming that it is short of funds and struggling to fund ongoing expansion projects, now in Phase IV development. 

As things stand today, the debt has risen to close to Rs 8000 crore which is good enough to sink the DMRC if the payout happens. While the government is reportedly mulling amendments in the Metro Rail (Operation & Maintenance) Act, 2002, to insulate the DMRC from this colossal payout, and, taking a leaf from this episode, also seeking to protect other metros and urban rail systems in the country from similar crises.

In a counter-affidavit filed before the Delhi High Court, the Ministry of Urban Development, which partially own the DMRC on behalf of the Government of India, claimed that the business plan of DAEMPL failed as they had “decided to adopt a different strategy to extricate themselves from this financial impasse.” 

Media reports quoted ministry officials as pinning the blame on DAEMPL for its flawed business model, which involved cross-subsidizing by harnessing the real estate potential available at the new metro stations along the airport line and the depot space which they had gained control over. Furthermore, the officials have pointed out that the DAEMPL played spoilsport by delaying the decision to exit the control until the defect liability period had lapsed and thus passing over the whole liability to the DMRC. 

Flawed arbitration laws, bad contracts and ignorant planners: While the union government may wriggle out the DMRC from this arbitral maze by using its legislative wherewithal, the whole episode underlines serious shortcomings in the conceptualization-to-design-to-execution practices of the DMRC planners on the Airport Line. 

The decision to outsource what was to be a vital cog in the wheel for the whole Delhi Metro network turned out to be a miserable decision that now has the potential to bankrupt the DMRC. Quite glaring in this episode is the absence of suitable contract negotiation/framing expertise when it comes to such important outsourced projects. 

Not to mention an injudicious tendering and vendor selection process which allowed the lowest bidder to gain a contract, effectively use the loopholes in its clauses to exit the venture and claim a huge compensation package far beyond its investment.

The more significant aspect, however, is the limitations inherent in the Arbitration and Reconciliation Act, which forecloses the scope for arbitration awards to be legally challenged or overruled. Experts have called out such half-baked legislation that makes a mockery of claims of making the country a global hub of corporate arbitrations. 

Delhi Airport Line still needs a revamp

The former DMRC Chairman, Dr E Sreedharan, pointed out in a recent interview that the Delhi Airport Line continues to run on losses despite getting over 67000 riders every day. This is even a decade after the DMRC took over the Airport Line and had integrated it with the main metro network through the Sector 21 station and backing it up with ticketing and smart card synchronization and fare parity. 

Evidently, footfall has significantly increased in the bygone decade. Furthermore, DMRC has managed to considerably monetize real estate infrastructure on the airport line, as illustrated by the food courts and shopping outlets at the Dhaula Kuan station as also the massive VFS visa processing centre occupying a major part of the Shivaji Stadium station. 

Still, why has the Airport Express Line failed to break-even after over a decade of integrated operations? The answer could lie in the legacy issues that persist from the initial planning process and hamper what should have been a seamless integration with the main metro network.

Stations, far and few: Having conceived the Airport Line as a dedicated feeder between the Terminal 3 of the Indira Gandhi International Airport and New Delhi Railway Station, via the city centre, DMRC planners made the himalayan blunder of providing for only very few stations on the Line, driven by the urge of providing a super-fast train with few stops. 

The result is that the Airport Line passes through some of the least populated zones of the otherwise highly populated city, including high-security zones of the Delhi Cantonment as well as a prominent urban forest within the New Delhi Municipal Corporation limits. A perfect plan, it should have been, in order to fulfil the original objectives as this was indisputably the shortest and swiftest route to connect the Airport to the city centre. The least populated route also demanded the least number of stations – only 4 between both ends. However, this strategy backfired in the long-run.

A seclusion that backfired: Added, the DMRC planners pursued an absurd agenda of keeping the Airport Line secluded and cut off from the main network, other than at the New Delhi Railway Station. As a result, even the exit/entry point at the city centre, which is Connaught Place, has been more than a easy walking distance away from the Rajiv Chowk metro station, which had emerged as the core junction of the massive metro network. This separation remained an enduring puzzle for regular users of the Airport Line on what the planners originally intended to achieve. 

Furthermore, with the IGI airport catering to the whole National Capital Region, including the satellite cities of Gurgaon, Faridabad, Noida and Ghaziabad, it was unwise to assume that the potential users from a population of 3 crores will hire cabs or drive up to Shivaji Stadium, Minto Road or Dhaula Kuan to board the Airport Line service, and vice versa.

While the DMRC sought to address such teething questions by opening check-in counters at the city-centre stations, the absence of integration with the main metro network and services ending by late evening, when international airlines fly out from IGI Airport past midnight, continued to affect the Airport Line’s public approval. Even the daily commuter traffic that was seen during rush hours was largely driven by connection opportunities at Dwarka Sector 21 and some multi-model options available at Dhaula Kuan and Aerocity stations.

Missing the integration opportunities: The glaring gap between the Shivaji Stadium station on the Airport Line and the Rajiv Chowk junction on the main metro network will continue to haunt DMRC planners for years to come. 

At the same time, it is amusing that the metro corporation which built a 1.5 km elevated pedestrian pathway connecting the Dhaula Kaun station to the Durgabhai Deshmukh South Campus Station on the Pink Line had so far failed to conceive and construct an underground pathway connecting the Shivaji Stadium station with Rajiv Chowk. 

While many such pathways had to be constructed in order to rectify such planning flaws, the DMRC management will have no such face savers when it comes to losing the massive integrated hub development opportunity, on the lines of the St. Thomas Mount station in Chennai, which they failed to identify at New Delhi’s Shankar Vihar intersection. 

The Shankar Vihar area on Palam Mod is a crucial entry point to New Delhi from its southern and south-western borders where the National Highway 48 enters the city. It is exactly at this point that the Airport Metro Express takes a subterranean plunge from its elevated lines to the underground tunnel opening up to the Aerocity station, and vice versa on the return route. It is also at this junction that the recently-added Magenta Line moves down from its elevated track to the underground section leading to the next station at the IGI Airport's Domestic Terminal-1.

It continues to bamboozle observers how the DMRC designers missed this huge junction opportunity, which could not just have interlinked the Magenta Line with the Airport Express Line, but also could have provided an interchange option between the T-1 (domestic) and T-3 (International) terminals of the IGI Airport. 

Far greater is the loss to DMRC in terms of overlooking the potential to build a multi-modal hub at this junction that could have emerged as a sought-after entry point to the city for surface transport users not just coming from Gurgaon and other neighbourhoods sparsely connected by public transport but also for visitors coming to the city from adjoining states.

Considering that this is a corporation that has executed stupendous engineering marvels in congested zones like Old Delhi using technological innovations, developing this junction into a multi-modal hub was a grave lost opportunity that the DMRC will regret for decades to come. 

Urban rails are the future; plan wisely

For a nation that is aspiring to be one of the largest economies, the reality of fast-expanding metropolises will also have urban rail systems as an integral part of their growth and expansion. As a nation known for its laggard working culture, the Delhi Metro with its efficiency has been a symbol of national pride, power and progress, an image that, however, gets dented with the Airport Line episode. 

For an urban mass transit system that is on par with its global peers, the DMRC gravely erred in the planning and execution of the Airport Express Metro. Considering that many of the errors were owing to lessons not learnt from earlier experiences like the Chennai MRTS, greater emphasis must be laid on qualitatively improving the planning, design and conceptualisation processes, which should not just adapt best practices from foreign lands, but also learn from monumental mistakes from experiences within the country and elswhere.