In the early 2000s, buoyed by the success of the Delhi Metro, several large and small cities in India began exploring the Metro system as a solution to rising traffic and congestion. Chandigarh was one of those cities.
In 2008, the Central government’s Urban development ministry approved a Metro for the city of Chandigarh. It also asked Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh administrators to prepare a detailed project report(DPR) to kick start the project. The plan was to create 7 Metro corridors, and have it fully working ready in about five years.
This was a highly ambitious project for such a small city, requiring substantial financial backing to bring it to reality.
However, questions arose about its feasibility, given the city’s population of less than a million, and whether such a significant investment was even necessary.
There was also no consensus on the routes, as Punjab demanded an extension of the line to Mohali. To address such differences among the various parties involved, nodal officers were appointed to oversee and coordinate between agencies.
At this point Delhi Metro Rail Corporation(DMRC) got involved. Given its track record in successfully building the Delhi Metro rail network, the administrators sought its assistance.
There was no progress on the ground though, as the funding source had yet to be determined, and the project was already running late.
Around 2011, as progress on the Metro remained slow, the idea of Trams began gaining traction among the agencies, as they seemed to meet their requirements. The High court even suggested the administration to study European cities where Trams were already in operation. But no concrete plans were made to understand and implement them.
Meanwhile, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) was simultaneously working on the city’s Metro Detailed Project Report (DPR) and actively engaging with officials from all states and the union territory’s administrators. The administrators appeared to have placed their full confidence in the Metro system.
However, the Central Planning Commission raised concerns about the project at this stage. A committee member questioned the necessity of a Metro system for a small city like Chandigarh. The Commission also conveyed that central government did not want to be an equity partner in projects that were not profitable ventures.
Although DMRC was a consultant for the project, it also argued that Chandigarh did not require a Metro system, as the maximum distance within the city was no more than 9 km. The Metro Man of India, E Sreedharan who was spearheading the DPR called the mega project “technically feasible but financially not viable”.
Chandigarh’s first Indian architect, M N Sharma at that time spoke against the project and said, “The Metro proposal shows the UT Administration’s weak urban transport policy and their bias towards high-cost mass rapid transit solutions, instead of cheaper and sustainable ones”.
In 2012, DMRC finally released its detailed project report. The work on first corridor covering a distance of 12.49 km was expected to begin from April 2013, and be operational by 2018.
However, costs remained a major concern. The first few lines would require nearly 10,000 crore, and Haryana, one of the project stakeholders, seemed reluctant to invest such a large amount. Given the confusion and lack of clarity on how to proceed, the Ministry of Urban Development sought an explanation on how the project would be funded.
Meanwhile, the opposition to the project was growing louder. In 2013, terming the Metro Rail Project for the city as non-feasible, architect and councillor Surinder Bahga wrote to the Ministry of Urban Development highlighting the problems in the project.
In 2014, the three stakeholders – Chandigarh, Punjab, and Haryana – failed to form a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) for the project’s execution. At this point, the entire project became even more expensive.
In 2015, DMRC submitted a revised DPR, with costs escalating to 13,600 crores, but in 2016, the central government rejected the proposal, and the project was scrapped due to its infeasibility.
The French Connection
That same year, France began actively collaborating with the city’s administrators to implement smart city projects, with improving mobility being one of the key priorities. In 2018, a French consultant firm Systra MVA was hired to prepare a comprehensive mobility plan for the city under the Chandigarh smart city project.
The agency then spent months studying the heritage, movement patterns, volume of traffic and suggested three transport corridors connecting Chandigarh, Panchkula and Mohali as they were deemed to be causing traffic.
Depending on few factors, the report suggested a combination of bus rapid transit system (BRTS), light rail transit (LRT), modern tram and monorail as possible modes of transport along these corridors.
The French were also keen to fund this mobility project and assured full support to the administration.
One of the major conclusions of the report was that it preferred Trams over other modes of transport for the city, and had also stated that monorail was far cheaper than Metro.
Their reasons for preferring Trams?
1. The passengers per hour per direction(PPHPD) was much less on the these corridors, and would not reach the required level for Metro system even until 2031.
2. Trams have the best visual impact they said, and is best suited for a heritage city like the Chandigarh.
3. Although both BRTS and elevated LRT were proposed, they were deemed less suitable due to their impact on pedestrian movement, and stronger visual disruption.
In 2019, a year later, the administration rejected the detailed report, citing the use of incorrect methodology in the study. They decided to revert to the earlier study conducted by DMRC.
Thus, the search began for a new consultant to prepare a comprehensive mobility report and repurpose the earlier findings of DMRC.
It had been almost 10 years now without any progress.
2019 and later
The year 2019 witnessed the Lok Sabha elections, and bringing Metro to the city became a major poll promise. Congress candidate Pawan Bansal said that reviving the project of Metro would be his priority. BJP leader Satya Pal Jain also favored Metro over other transport systems.
In 2021, the union territory administrators once again tasked RITES with preparing a fresh comprehensive mobility plan for the city. RITES had also prepared the first plan in 2009, in which it had recommended a Metro system for the city.
As expected, the new report once again pushed the Metro system onto the residents, and the administrators of the city approved Metro Phase-1 in 2023.
In early 2024, cracks began to reappear again. The Punjab government cited unavailability of land, costs were spiraling, and it was still undecided whether the system would be elevated or underground. To preserve the heritage and aesthetic beauty of the city, Chandigarh Heritage Conservation Committee highly recommended that the Metro project should be entirely underground.
However, going underground would increase the expenditure by nearly 8,000 crore, bringing the total project cost to around 19,000 crore.
Ultimately, it was decided that few stretches would be underground while majority would be elevated. The construction was slated to begin in 2027 and end by 2034, with Phase 2 development starting after 2037.
The project’s cost had escalated to 21,179 crore, but even then, the source of funding remained a big question mark.
In July 2024, it was reported that the Central government had finally approved this new plan, but in Nov 2024, the Central government rebutted this and said that no approvals were granted to the project.
On November 18, 2024, Union minister of power and housing and urban affairs Manohar Lal Khattar, expressed concerns over low Metro ridership, which he said could impact the project’s viability.
A few days earlier, the city’s administrators had formed yet another committee to evaluate the financial and economic feasibility of the system.
This eight member committee released its first report on Jan 28, 2025 where it said that the Metro project was viable for the tri-city, but it would take at least 17 years for operators to achieve profitability. It also stated that the costs would further rise to 30,000 crores.
Given the slow progress and ongoing confusion, it seems the city will have to wait several more years for the Metro to become operational. Metro construction is a slow and challenging process, and underground sections only complicate it further.
Had the administration opted for a tram system(with a combination of buses) instead of the Metro, it would likely have met all of the city’s needs, and most areas would have already been covered by now.
Delays are common for large projects, but when compared to the timelines of other metro projects within the country, Chandigarh’s timeline is considerably longer. The primary reason is that the Metro is unsuitable for the city’s low density and size. Trying to fit this ill-suited option into the transport puzzle is bound to cause problems.
It’s been 17 years since the idea was first proposed in 2008, and it’s still just on paper. I wouldn’t be surprised if it remains that way for a few more years, with more committees and revised DPRs.
Questions must be asked of the administrators and politicians as to why they are pursuing a project that has been deemed unfeasible in multiple reports. If solving traffic congestion is the ultimate goal, there are already better, more capable, cost-effective, and efficient alternatives available.
In 2006, the central government had released the National Urban Transport Policy, emphasizing the urgent need to address urban transit issues. The document highlighted the high costs of the Metro compared to other transport systems and recommended it only for densely populated cities.
If the Metro wasn’t the best choice for Chandigarh, why was it approved in 2008, two years later?
Large projects like these become cumbersome for cities like Chandigarh, where too many stakeholders with conflicting interests are involved.
While the project has its flaws, some of which are self-inflicted, the story is quite similar for other Tier 1 and 2 cities that have opted for the Metro system instead of more suitable alternatives. Ridership is much lower than the projected numbers. There are several reasons for this, but high construction and operational costs are a common theme.
Pune Metro for example is grappling than lower than estimated ridership. According to Ranjit Gadgil, Program Director at Parisar, a Pune-based NGO, “There has always been a very consistent pattern of overestimating ridership and underestimating costs for Metro projects in India. This allows them to pass the bar that has been set by typically the Ministry of Finance to get approval for the project.
In 2019, the central government of India released guidelines for smaller cities, recommending a light urban rail transit system or ‘Metrolite’ for towns with lower ridership projections. This at-grade solution, with certain stretches elevated, also included financial assistance for states to implement it. However, to date, none of the cities have considered this proposal.
In economics, there is a term called ‘Sunk cost,’ which refers to a cost that has already been incurred and cannot be recovered. The related concept, ‘Sunk cost fallacy,’ is the tendency to continue investing in something we’ve already committed heavily to, even when abandoning it would be a better choice.
The administrators of Chandigarh have fallen into this trap, and seem to overlook that it may be time to abandon the Metro idea and opt for a simpler, more suitable solution, such as a tram system or a comprehensive bus network.
