NOIDA: Like the ‘fast’ locals in Mumbai and ‘galloping’ suburban trains in Kolkata, Noida will start running ‘fast trains’ on the Aqua Line, starting Monday. The need for a faster service hasn’t, however, come from a glut of passengers but an acute dearth of them two years into the metro service, refocusing questions on Aqua Line’s route alignment.
From February 8, trains will traverse the 29.7km span of the Aqua Line around 9-10 minutes faster than they usually do between 8am and 11am, defined as morning peak hours. This is because the trains will not halt at 10 stations with low footfall, three of which currently have a daily average of just 15 passengers. NMRC managing director and Noida Authority CEO Ritu Maheshwari said, “The fast trains will help commuters from Pari Chowk reach Sector 51 in 28 minutes.”
The fast trains, palpably, are an effort to optimise operations. “The maximum footfall among the 10 stations that the trains will skip is at Sector 83, which gets around 300 riders,” said an official. Sectors 144, 145 and 147 see an average 15 riders trickling in a day while sectors 100, 101 and 143 average just 100 each. “The changes are being introduced to make the line more time-efficient,” said Praveen Mishra, executive director of Noida Metro Rail Corporation (NMRC). “Residents in the 140 series of sectors can use the Sector 137 station, which now gets around 500 riders,” said an official.
The abysmally low footfalls at some stations isn’t surprising. The Aqua Line, built at a cost of Rs 5,000 crore, passes through localities that are sparsely populated, with vast swathes occupied by housing complexes that are still under construction, or is farmland that is yet to be developed, particularly between sectors 148 and 143 on the Noida Expressway.
It does not connect the populated parts of Noida Expressway – sectors 94, 91, 98 and 127 – nor does it cater to Greater Noida West (Noida Extension). The latter is likely to be on the metro map in future, with an extension of the Aqua Line planned. But it’s the other extension in the works – from Sector 142 to Botanical Garden – that holds the key to the ridership fortunes of the Aqua Line. This route would have seemed like a natural choice for a mass transit system, not only because it would align with the expressway but also the connectivity at Botanical Garden with Delhi Metro’s Blue and Magenta Lines. The Aqua Line has no interface with Delhi Metro now. Passengers have to get off at Sector 51 station and walk down to catch the Blue line from the neighbouring metro station.
NMRC director Narendra Bhooshan admitted the line will become more “efficient” once the Sector 142-Botanical Garden link is built. “The efficiency of the Aqua Line will be enhanced when the second arm of the line from Sector 142 to Botanical Garden comes up. The DPR (detailed project report) is ready and it will help connect the internal populated sectors with Delhi Metro and bring Greater Noida closer to Delhi, which should now be the main focus,” Bhooshan said.
What was the logic, then, behind the current alignment of the Aqua Line? No one wants to answer this question. “When these stations were created, the NMRC had a future vision that these areas are going to be densely populated. But that does not seem to be the case now. Maybe, in future, these stations will see more demand than now,” said an official, who asked not be named.
The overall ridership of NMRC has been low since the beginning. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, NMRC had an average footfall of around 28,000 per day, which has now come down to a peak of around 11,000.