Originally Posted by
Mark_mnl
The main purpose of the D.C. Metro is the same as that of the Bay Area's BART system: to allow people who live in the suburbs to get to work without bringing their cars into the city. Even if you are already in D.C., the metro is only good for riding within downtown or riding from downtown to places that happen to be accessible to a metro stop. Even within the city, Georgetown and the northern neighborhoods are poorly served (probably deliberately so to keep out the "rif-raff").
As for Delhi, things are obviously changing rapidly but when I last visited my friend there in 2008, she had to take a taxi (autos not allowed) from her subdivision in Gurgoan to Dwarka in order to use the system within Delhi. Delhi is so big and sprawling with development spilling far outside the city limits that a truly comprehensive metro system is difficult to imagine.
The yellow line of the metro now comes all the way up to HUDA City Center in Gurgaon.
Autos ply all over Gurgaon now, even to subdivisions considered exclusive by people who live in those subdivisions. On rare occasions, I have even seen autos with telephone number printed on the sides so that you could call them. The one I saw was red in colour, instead of the usual green.
If you live in one of those subdivisions, you have to call a taxi or auto ahead. I lived in Gurgaon during a part of my stay. If I wanted to hail an auto, I had to walk a mile and half or more to the main gate. Once outside the subdivision, I could get an auto or even a shared auto. You could even bring a cycle rickshaw into the subdivision from outside.
In any case, Gurgaon is a remote suburb of NCT. Twenty years ago, no foreign visitor would have even heard of or need to visit Gurgaon.
I used all the lines except the green line and the airport line in Delhi. It's quue good, but is nowhere close to making tall claims. Announcement at New Delhi Metro stop told passengers to get off there to change to the airport line, which did not even operate then.