 I remember first looking into metro systems in India when I was a kid, and I was a little sad that the country only had two systems at the time. But things have changed in a big way. Just a little over a decade later, India now has 15 metro systems all across the country, which I'm going to help you get familiar with today. The Delhi Metro has grown to be one of the top metro systems in the world in terms of number of passengers every day and the size of the network itself. And it's still continuing to grow really quickly. So when things start to slow down with its growth, it will be one of the largest in the world. In this video, I want to take you around the country and show you some of these metro systems. Get a sense for what's common among many Indian metro systems, and just take you on a tour of what is probably the world's capital of metro construction today, and a country that will soon be home to express metro lines and high-speed rail lines as well. As I mentioned before, just about a decade ago, India's metro boom was just starting to get underway. With only the two original systems, the Delhi Metro, and the country's original system in Kokkata being open. Since then, things have changed in a big way. Just to put things into perspective, in the last ten years, the Delhi Metro has added more track than what consists of the entire Vienna U-Bahn, which is a network that a lot of people think is really excellent in its own right. By the way, make sure you're subscribed for a video on that system coming very soon. What's interesting too is that so many metro systems have been constructed in India now that there's sort of a standard approach to building metro in India. You'll notice that many systems have a lot of common elements. Now I think the first systems to look at when you're talking about metros in India are the systems in the national capital region. This is the country's biggest urban agglomeration, and the second biggest city in the world, with Delhi at its center. Only Tokyo is bigger. Now as I mentioned before, the Delhi Metro is a really impressive system. It has ten lines right now, and all of the latest technology to expect, from automated lines to platform screen doors quite extensively. And it's worth reminding you that these technologies aren't even widespread in places like Germany or the United States yet. It uses high power AC voltages delivered by an overhead line, and a number of the lines use the broad gauge that you see on main line trains in India. It's pretty obvious that Delhi Metro has become the country's leading metro system, so much so that the public company now consults to other systems in the country, helping more metro systems get constructed. And it's even started to consult with other systems overseas. The city currently has 255 stations on 350km of track, which means it does have quite a wide average stop spacing. Of course, Delhi also has its RRTS system being developed, which I made a video about up here. That will start to form a high capacity, high speed regional rail network, which will connect Delhi with its satellite cities. One last detail about the Delhi Metro, make sure you subscribe down below, because I'll be doing a full explained video on it in the near future, along with probably other systems in the country like the Mumbai Metro. While the Delhi Metro is large, the Delhi National Capital Region is so large that there are actually other cities within it that have metro systems which connect up with the Delhi Metro. The first of these is the Noida Metro, which connects Noida, in the south east of Delhi, to the Delhi Metro itself. The Noida Metro system currently only consists of one line, but there are serious expansion plans to add additional lines and extensions in the future, including one which will connect to the new Noida International Airport, which is sort of going to be the National Capital Region's new Mega Hub Airport, with a capacity for over 100 million passengers every single year. Much like the Delhi Metro, the Noida Metro operates using 25KVAC overhead power, and the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, the DMRC, actually operates and maintains the Noida Metro. Noida's system currently has 21 stations over 29km of route. And if you're wondering why it's a separate system, it's actually located in a separate state from the rest of the Delhi Metro. To the National Capital Region's southwest is Gurgaon, a major financial and service sector economic hub, which plays host to the Rapid Metro Gurgaon. This shorter system operates smaller trains, which operate off a 750V DC third rail, which is somewhat hilariously sometimes referred to as LRT, even though this is really more of a metro-style system. The Rapid Metro Gurgaon has 11 stations over 11km of track. I do have to give kudos as well to the systems in the National Capital Region of India, because they're all working together on an integrated fare system that will allow people to seamlessly travel from one system to the next. Something that I wish we had, but we still do not have in my home city of Toronto. Now let's leave the National Capital Region and look at the other metro systems across the country. I'll divide the systems based on whether they use 750V DC third rail, or 25KVAC It's interesting, but all of India's systems can basically be divided into those two categories. Now before we talk about all the new metro systems in India, it is important to take a look back at Kolkata's system. The system currently has two lines, but three more under construction, as well as a number of extensions to existing infrastructure. Quite uniquely as well, since many metro lines in India have adopted standard gauge rather than broad gauge seen more widely, Kolkata's metro does use broad gauge. To get into the newer systems, let's start with the third rail powered systems. For the third rail powered systems, we have Bengaluru, Koshy, and Ahmedabad. Bengaluru's metro is known as the Nama Metro, and is a two line system with 51 stations on 56km of track, that first opened in October of 2011. I find the aesthetics of this system actually really nice, and that's probably in part because the third rail leads to a visually simpler looking system. That said, the system is about to add a lot more lines, three more under construction with over 100km of new track being built. Koshy is a 22 station system on 27km of track that opened back in 2017. And outside of Delhi, the system has my favorite metro logo out of all the systems I've seen in India. The Koshy metro system is being extended with two new lines, as well as a number of line extensions as we speak. And one element of it I really like are the extensive overhead pedestrian bridges, which link stations on mostly elevated linements to adjacent development directly. There's also a metabat. This system currently has a small 6 station, 6km segment of its first line open. And it's been that way since 2019. The city is also building two new additional lines. Like a lot of systems in India, the trains currently being used are only 3 cars long. But there's lots of room in the future to expand, as again with most systems in India, the platforms are designed for longer trains and the signalling is modern, so higher frequencies are also possible. Now let's take a look at the overhead wire powered systems, a rather unique engineering decision that is pretty clearly influenced by the Delhi Metro's choice to use the same technology. The systems in this category include Jaipur, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Nagpur, Chennai, Pune, and Mumbai. Jaipur is a one line system with 11 stations over 12km of track that first opened in 2015. The Lucknow Metro includes one line with 21 stations over 23km of track, whose trains are incredibly similar to those being used on the Montreal Rem, which were actually built in the same factory in India as these trains for Lucknow, as well as trains being used on Sydney Metro and the Grand Paris Express. The system first opened in 2017, and a second line is already in development. The Hyderabad Metro is actually one of the most developed in the country at the moment, with 3 lines with 57 stations over 68km of track already in operation. And yeah, it first opened in 2017, it's only a 4 year old system. I also have to say I'm a big fan of the Metro map of this system, which is a really clean, nice design. As you can probably imagine, the system is planned to more than double in size in the future, and one major extension is already under construction, with a number more already approved. The Nagpur Metro has 2 lines with 24 stations on 26km of track already operating. The system first opened just 3 years ago in 2019, and it's already planned to grow by more than 30% within a number of new stations in the coming years. Next up is the Chennai Metro, which has 2 lines in its system with 42 stations and over 54km of track, which first opened in 2015. This system is set to more than triple in size in the coming years, with 3 new lines already under construction. At the same time, the existing MRTS line, which is essentially what would happen if you took a typical Indian suburban train line with its massive long and wide trains, and elevated it with Metro style infrastructure. This line is actually being transferred over to become part of the standard Chennai Metro system, broad gauge, giant trains and all. The Pune Metro is the newest in the country, having opened literally just a few months ago, with a first line with 10 stations over 12km of track. And the system has 2 more lines as well as a number of extensions under construction, and it has probably my favorite Metro trains in the entire country, produced by a local firm called Titzegar Fiorima. Last but definitely not least is Mumbai, whose Metro system was delayed by a fair amount, but who's clearly working to make up for lost time. Line 1 of the Metro system first opened in 2014, and lines 2A and 7 opened just a few months ago. I should also mention the 21km 17 station Mumbai Monorail, which is also already operating. Now at the moment in Mumbai, more Metro is being constructed than already exists in many large cities. The system currently has its 3 lines with 31 stations, but 7 more lines are under construction, with more than 130km of track, and 5 more are being prepared for construction. Clearly the plan is for the Mumbai Metro to become a network similar in scale to the Delhi Metro today, and that'll all probably happen within the next decade or two. It's going to be really exciting to see India get a second massive Metro system like this that'll clearly transform getting around Mumbai's somewhat difficult geography. Even better still, cities around Mumbai, similar to Noida and Gurgaon around Delhi, will likely create their own Metro systems, which will link directly into Mumbai's. All of this combined will hopefully lead to the impetus to upgrade the existing Mumbai suburban train network, one of the busiest in the world, to more modern and even more high capacity standards. As you can see, India is building rapid transit systems at a pretty crazy rate, with 5 new systems opened in just the last 4 years. Not only are these systems growing really quickly, but there are even more in the pipeline. Some of those entirely new systems are being built in places like Navi Mumbai, Kanpur, Bhoj, Indore, Patna, Agra, Surat and Meirut, which will be connected to Delhi via the first RRTS line. While cities like Surat will be connected to Ahmedabad and Mumbai via the country's first high-speed rail corridor being built in partnership with Japan. The amazing thing for me is the modernity of Indian Metro systems. Someone once described the Delhi Metro system to me as similar to the Singapore MRT, and in many ways that feels accurate. Trains are modern, platform screen doors are all over the place, and trains are generally really nice. A number of international companies that are super reputable for building Metro systems from Alstom to Siemens to Hyundai Rotom have also set up shop to help build a lot of the Metro systems in the country, and a lot of local Indian companies are becoming quite experienced in building Metros and Metro equipment in their own right. Companies like BEML are already producing really nice trains or rakes as they're known locally with features like bike racks, internal digital wayfinding, and fully articulated designs. Now if you're wondering how this all happened so quickly, it's a number of things. Delhi Metro consulting to so many other systems meant that they didn't have to necessarily relearn the same lessons Delhi had already learned. Systems in India also extensively used ground level and elevated operation to reduce cost and improve construction speed. Unlike a lot of places in the world as well, long-term plans actually exist and are generally adhered to pretty well. That means it's generally pretty clear which Metro lines will be constructed next and so when money comes in it's obvious where to allocate it to. I should also say India is building more than just standard Metro systems. I've mentioned the Delhi RRTS system and a number of other cities are already proposing their own RRTS systems. At the same time, many smaller cities as well as larger cities looking for smaller lines to fill in gaps are proposing Metro light systems which are essentially light Metro systems with lower capacity than traditional Metro systems and a number of cost-saving measures to help them be more cost-effective. With that, we have the country and the world that's building the most Metro systems and probably the most kilometers of new Metro track at the same time. It excites me to see so many fast growing cities building zero emissions public transit especially to supplement the existing really extensive and heavily used suburban rail systems all of which will be tied together in the future by high-speed RRTS and intercity trains and that's not even to mention things like the dedicated freight corridors a whole network of dedicated electrified rail freight lines crossing India. The future for railways in India is really bright. Thanks for watching.