Is Population the Correct Metric to Decide whether to have a Metro Rail System?

                                    Is Population the Correct Metric to Decide whether to have a Metro Rail System?

There is this fight going on between the Tamil Nadu state government and the Union Government about according sanction to build a metro system for Coimbatore and Madurai, in Tamil Nadu. I am not getting into this fight.

I do wish to ask the question as given in the heading of the write-up. Should it not be ridership and length of travel per trip?

Take the case of Agra, a tourist city. How touristy was it in 1977? Not very. Three of us, all post-graduate students at IIT Kanpur (no females and in a visit to Agra that is sacrilege!) visited the mausoleum (that is really what it is). There were no tempos (three wheeler designed for six passengers but carried as many as 17; one late night, I was the 17th passenger from the railway station to the campus) at that time, we did not notice any other mode of transport, not even a bus, and to make the experience vivid, there was no designated bus stop. That is when a bus, I may call it nothing more than a jalopy, approached us. We flagged it down. No, it came to a stop on its own. There were no passengers! We asked the driver whether he would drive us to our destination. He very happily took us in and drove us to the hotel. On the way we learned that after the visiting hours are over he gets no passengers and he takes, for a fee, anyone tourist anywhere they want to go.

Now, I am happy a metro system will be available, nearly half a century later. The population of Agra in 1977 was 703,000 and in 2025, it is, 2,478,000. The critical point is this is not on account of tourism, floating population. It is the base population. Yes, Agra needs a metro system. I am sure Fatehpur Sikri, another tourist destination, is a station on the system, though it is nearly 40 km from Agra.

Let us look at Coimbatore, a serious hub of industrial activity. Further, Maruthamalai, a must-visit religious center for devotees of Lord Murugan is  only 20 km away. So, we may add it in our metro system for this city. On top of that, it has more than its share of educational institutions and my estimate is per day ridership would give a good run for the money to Agra, whether it comes to ridership or total distance travel.

We, those are the meaningful metrics and not population.

Raghuram Ekambaram