[1]Making its debut on a small eight-km stretch on this day in 2002, Delhi Metro has had a stupendous journey in the last nine years with its network spreading far and wide across the National Capital Region giving the people an affordable mode of transport.
Delhi Metro on Saturday completed nine years of operations in the national capital and now it has a network of nearly 200 km, including the high-speed Airport Express Corridor.
After its launch in 2002, Delhi Metro slowly added several corridors to its network over the years thus bringing satellite cities of Noida, Gurgaon and Ghaziabad closer to the national capital.
The first ever Metro service was started on December 24, 2002 between Shahdara and Tis Hazari and the ridership has increased leaps and bounds over the nine years to reach 20 lakh passengers a day.
The year gone-by was one of transition for the Delhi Metro as it slowly moved towards launching of work of the ambitious Phase-III project, which will add another 117 km to the Metro map, after the successful completion of the second phase.
In 2011, the Delhi Metro DMRC added another 34.52 km of Metro lines to its network taking the total length of the Delhi Metro system to over 190 km.
In the month of February, the Airport Express Link was also opened for commuter operations. On February 23rd, the services were started for the commuters.
With the opening of this 23.7 km long historic corridor, Delhi joined the elite list of global cities such as Shanghai, Tokyo, London etc. which have direct Metro connectivity between the airport and the city centre.
Another major achievement was the extension of the Metro services up to Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh.
During the year, the DMRC was also involved in planning the next phase of Metro construction across the National Capital Region.
Links:
[1] http://103.241.136.51/delhimetro-wiki3jpgcropdisplayjpg-493