Since all the construction for Commonwealth Games was undertaken, some of it finished on time and some not, some phrases are thrown around in Delhi press, indiscriminately, in my opinion.

I was in Delhi, for nearly two months. I can see that it's much easier to negotiate now, than it was before the Metro, although, metro has it's own problems, mostly due to the people who use it.

The airport is nicer too. But in my opinion, Delhi is not a world class opinion even with the swanky airport with all its glittery pictures and the Metro, which is better that some Metros I have come across, the one in Istanbul and the one in Washington, D.C., to name a couple.
The fast and efficient metro enables you to travel long distances in Delhi rather quickly. The longest I had wait for a train was 8 minutes, and that was late at night. During the day, the trains were very frequent. If you missed on another would be there in as little as a minute.

Once different modes of public transport are properly linked, Delhi would be a little closer to being a world class city, but far from it. For example, there is no way to get to the निज़ामुद्दीन -Nizamuddin- Train Station (NZMD), or the nearby ISBT at सराय क़ाले ख़ान, - Sarai Kale Khan-of Delhi using the Metro and it's difficult to get there by buses too, from some parts of Delhi. Both, New Delhi (NDLS) as as well as NZMD have entrance on either side of the tracks, but you have to use steps to get to the building on each side, and use a bridge with stairs to go from one side to the other. The same situation At NDLS, which also has a metro stop, I could not find a way to get to the railway station from the metro station without coming to the surface, walking up or down the stairs, and walking through lanes of traffic or parking for taxis. I am told one can go from the Metro Station to the Irport Express station under ground.
The pushing and shoving has simply moved from buses to Metro, when passing through the security check point, when swiping your token or the smart card, or depositing your token, as well as when getting on or getting off a train.
As you are putting your bag on the security belt, however small it might be, one or more people would always reach from behind and put their stuff ahead of yours on the belt.
People negotiate their way through crowded platforms/trains by putting their hands on you (your back) as if they were swimming. Even when they are lined up before the arrival of the train, all order disappears once the train arrives as if a big cat (lion or a tiger) had been sensed by gazelles.

Some people act is if they have never seen, which is probably true, an elevator. They run to one, as soon as they have pushed around the old, disabled or those with luggage, to crowd around the elevator. Once, when I managed to get on one with a small carry on, the elevator would not budge as it was overloaded. So I looked around and picked out three people who were not old, disabled, pregnant or carried luggage. They were probably in their early twenties. One pointed to his laptop shoulder bag claiming it to be his luggage.
On another occasion, I grabbed one guy by his jacket as he pushed his way around me to get on the train while some of walked towards the door. The guy retorted "He is breaking the line too. Why don't you stop him".
With behaviour like this, Delhi will never be a world class city. People drive as if they are walking. If some one is in your path, go around him. Their only concern is to get where they are going. They will break every rule of civilised driving. Once, I was nudged by a car coming from behind. I was walking on the road, as side walk was occupied by vendors and illegally parked vehicles. I wasn't hurt terribly, but was taken aback. I was about to say something like "Look where you are going man!" or something like that, but was preempted with "Can't you see where you are going?" No one ever wants to admit of the possibility that they actually might be at fault.

World class city? No sir. Indian pandemonium.

Yaatri - the last three paragraphs of your description of Delhi remind me much of Beijing, Shanghai and many cities in mainland China and I'm sure its not just limited to China and India!

delhi will always be the same unless the attitude of the people change....

I started to read your post with interest, but you lost all credibility with your assessment of the DC metro. I lived there for several years and it was always clean, safe, fast, and on time.

You lost all credibility with the clean part.

"world class" I've always thought of as an appelation that applies to regional cities with aspirations or affectations. New York, Paris, London, Istanbul and Tokyo don't go trotting out "world class" they know they are the best.

As for the original, I'm not quite sure. Currently Delhi doesn't have the vibrancy necessary.

DC Metro is practically useless if you live in the suburbs and don't have a car.
Not only is it an irony when you have to depend on your car to use a mass transit system, it defeats the main purpose of having a mass transit system.
D.C. Metro breaks down quite frequently. Some sections have a single track. Escalators are often not functioning.
D.C. Metro is usually more expensive than driving, Delhi Metro is not.
Connectivity with bus is poor in Washington D.C. suburbs.
Delhi Metro has charging points for mobile phones, D.C. Metro is not.
Delhi Metro is operating profitably, D.C. metro is not.
Frequency of D.C. metro is poor. Waiting 15 minutes for a train is not uncommon.
You have to see how the metro fits in with the rest of the public transport. Washington, D.C> area has very poor transit system when compared to a city like New York.
Now let's talk about credibility.

It's been a few years since we lived there, so I guess things could have changed. It was always clean when I rode the metro.

We owned and lived in two different places right in DC, so the Metro worked well for us. I agree a lot of folks need to drive to a metro station in the burbs. The fact that folks were willing to do that says a lot about how much time it could save you versus driving. I always found traffic horrible in the greater DC area and I lived there a long time.

Nah, let's move to something else.

Metro was even more sparse back in the 80's. The green line was not even wasn't even completed until 1999 while its completion date was 1976. So your familiarity with the D.C. Metro, as well as your credibility is highly questionable. It may have served your needs, but surely, you don't think it was built just for your benefit. I hope you didn't think there weren't any suburbs around Washington, D.C.


The metro does not even cover all parts of D.C., which is quite small really. Again, cherry picking your examples doesn't prove anything, but lack of your credibility. Even if one could drive to a metro station, not everyone worked in a place easily accessible from a metro station. Even at the highest levels of oil prices, metro ridership does not exceed about a quarter of a million trips. D.C. metro is. at best, skeletal. The gaps need to be filled for the system to be truly functional and useful.

I see. You haven't got any left to talk about.
I did not say anything about cleanliness of D.C. Metro. The metro While the metro stations and the trains in Delhi are clean, people travelling in the metro is quite another matter (terrible BO).

...its not fast either. Then again (having grown up in Baltimore and having spend enough time in DC), I now live in HKG and have some pretty high expectations

I think you have set your expectations way too high. I live in Tokyo, which has one of the best (arguably THE best) rail and subway systems on the planet, current power issues be damned. And it is--surprise surprise!--incredibly inconvenient at certain key times and places. You can get trains direct from most of the major railway stations to NRT, but the relevant platforms at Tokyo, Shinjuku and Ueno are in the most ridiculously isolated locations imaginable. Underground corridors are inexplicably designed: the station near my in-laws' place has a 10 m wide, 100 m long corridor which turns 90 degrees into a 5 m wide corridor which leads to a single elevator with a realistic capacity of no more than eight people. Subway lines frequently cross each other with no connection at all, the network map is a nightmarish bowl of spaghetti, and for inexplicable reasons you have stations adjacent to each other, with indoor connections between them, and totally different names. Yet it's still an amazing system, one of the best on the planet, and millions of people get by entirely without cars here.

For what it's worth, DC has one of the better metro systems I have encountered in the United States. I put it up there with Chicago and Boston. If it went out to IAD I would consider it to be nearly perfect. New York's is comprehensive but poorly organized and surprisingly limited in terms of where you can go; Philadelphia's is run-down and almost shockingly segregated from the "genteel" suburban rail lines. Good luck in LA, Miami or Denver where the trains go absolutely nowhere.

Which systems do you consider to be better than Delhi's?

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.

i've had my share of issues with the d.c. metro....been involved in a bunch of cancellations & delays....

so far, i have been extremely impressed with the delhi metro....i have only used it about half a dozen times since it started but its clean & efficient....

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.

The highest ridership of Washington D.C. metro on record is about 800,000 trips per weekday while that of Delhi has already crossed twice that figure 1600000 lakhs, 1.6 million. My worry is that the system is new now. Will it still be efficient when it's not new?

I have had to give up using public transport a number of times due to the inconvenience of using it, the time it consumed and frequent breakdown of escalators. You actually save time and money when you use Delhi Metro instead of your car. Higher population density of Delhi area is one big factor pointing to the fact that American model of suburban sprawl is not a sustainable one, not for India and not even for America.

Was browsing the forum - going to be in Delhi for a few days this summer - and saw the discussion on the DC metro.

Needless to say it's pretty much gone down the tubes (pun intended) very rapidly over the last couple of years. Systemic problems with escalators, breakdowns during rushhour, major management problems... to get caught up I would recommend reading unsuckdcmetro.blogspot.com .

Looking forward to exploring the Delhi metro though!