Hyderabad Airport metro express seems unnecessary.
Hyderabad airport metro express is being planned between Riadurg and Shamshabad in Phase 2. The alignment of the proposed airport metro route between Raidurg and Airport via ORR is questionable for the reasons below.
Note: The colors used in the map are wrong, but I just took it from a 3rd party source who has an integrated phase 1 and phase 2 maps.
a) As per this news article, daily passenger traffic is 60,000 with 20% CAGR, which is typically spread out through out the day.
b) Assuming 60% take ORR and remaining PVNR expressway, say 36K daily passenger traffic go through ORR.
c) Not everyone will take a metro. Let’s assume 75% do. 27K.
So, for a two way 27K to 36K avg daily passenger traffic , lets assume one way 14K-18K passengers that are spread out through out the day almost evenly. A mass transit system like metro is clearly is unnecessary and can easily be met with an efficient BRTS. Typically, MRTS is used where the peak traffic is very high — 40K-80K passengers per hour per direction (PPHPD)which can only be satisfied by metro rail like mass transit systems.
For a 56 KM route currently operational, 4 lac daily ridership was the per day peak traffic achieved in Oct 2019. L&T Metro Rail posted a loss of Rs 58.36 crs in FY 17–18. Let’s hope that they are profitable in FY 18–19 & 19–20 when the ridership has peaked.
Of course, the government needs to think and plan for a 20 year time frame for such a massive infrastructure. However, it is not guaranteed that the airport traffic will maintain the 20% CAGR for the next 20 years. Also, the rate of growth of population within the city is far greater than the rate of growth of airport passenger traffic.
Conclusion #1 — For a 30 Km stretch, Rs 5000 cr budget, 20% CAGR in passenger traffic for next 4 years (same as the expected duration of construction of metro), it can be interpolated to cater to 75K — 100K airport passengers ,staff and pilots daily. Even if we add another 50K non-airport passengers from shamshabad, Rajendernagar, Narsingi & Nanakramaguda areas it still does not make any financial sense to me (without having accurate data). We need to watch out for the metro financial numbers for 2018–19 .
d) ORR is a highway, with service roads. It has not been designed & built originally to support metro, because metro requires a compact, dense and pedestrian friendly access streets and public bus infrastructure which is lacking, and may not be feasible to implement around ORR. Let’s hope the designers & planners do a good job in accessibility to station and last mile connectivity.
e) Currently, there is hardly any population along that stretch and it passes besides bio conservation zones of Himayat Sagar and Osman Sagar lakes. So no further development is expected there in future. Special Growth Corridor along ORR will take many more years to grow.
Conclusion #2 — The long stretch of metro route (30 kms) where there is less potential of future population density and slow growth makes it questionable for sustainability.
f) This route is expected to mainly serve the airport passengers, which is a rare occurrence by the minority of population who can afford a flight or travel for business.
g) The strategic growth corridor that it will cater to has high land prices and mostly consists of villas and high end apartments.
Conclusion#3 — There is clearly a question of equability here since this public transport infrastructure is more focused towards people who can afford flight tickets and not for the middle class and poor.
h) The daily work related commutes in private vehicles in the western Hyderabad causes more traffic congestion than the airport traffic on ORR, which is usually spread out throughout the day. So strategically, it is important to address that mobility demand first to reduce traffic congestion. Areas like Financial District, DLF city etc need to be covered.
i) Even though an interchange metro station at Raidurg is built, people with luggage will prefer to directly go to Raidurg metro station, because carrying luggage in the other metro lines during rush hours is difficult. (I’m hoping that the coach design of airport express accounts for luggage). So, we will end up redirecting a lot of car/cab traffic for airport passengers to Raidurg metro station that will increase traffic density and congestion on the already congested roads in that area.
Conclusion#4 — The route alignment does not cater to the highest traffic density areas and work centers that are daily commuter requirements, and instead focuses on serving a population with rare commute trips to airport. It also does not account increase of traffic congestion due to car/cab traffic at and around Raidurg station by passengers wanting to take the metro to the airport.
e) Airport passengers usually have big bags, can afford cab up to the airport for convenience and hence may still prefer to use cabs, thus questioning the very demand of a metro to airport. Handling baggage at three different points in the journey to airport (at source, at the metro station and at the airport) is inconvenient. Of course, it also depends on how smoothly the metro is integrated into the airport.
In lieu of these above reasons, I propose that the Phase 2 metro alignment be modified to connect more work centers to residential areas instead of connecting Raidurg to the airport.
The demand for change is illustrated below. The route is Raidurg metro station (opp Mind space), Mind space road, Ramky towers/Rolling Hills, DLF road, ISB Road and ends at ORR intersection . There are many work centers and residential apartments coming up in that area. This will connect more work centers like DLF, Financial District to the existing metro lines. It also has an added advantage of extending it further to Kokapet in the next or current phase.
Since I’m questioning the current plan of the government to connect airport to Hyderabad, I also wrote another blog to suggest alternatives.
Note: This is a very high level analysis based on available data on the net. Happy to be proven wrong. Its tax payers money, and I’m concern about the right and effective usage of it.
