India has splurged billions on metro trains. But where are the commuters?

India has splurged billions on metro trains. But where are the commuters?Just nowShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleNikhil InamdarHindustan Times via Getty ImagesIndia has spent $26bn on building a metro network across nearly two dozen citiesOn a weekday evening last month, Mumbai's southbound Aqua Line metro train nearly emptied out a couple of stops before the final one.On de-boarding, the last station bore the look of a desolate Soviet-era structure rather than a bustling train terminal in a city where crowds typically jostle for space.Aqua Line is the city's new fully underground metro train connecting the old business district of Cuffe Parade to newer commercial hubs like BKC and the airport terminals in the northern suburbs. It opened last year.The 33.5km (20.8 miles) corridor was expected to ease congestion in India's financial capital and projected to carry nearly 1.5 million passengers every day. The actual numbers are about a tenth of that, as per various estimates."Not a lot of people are using the line. It's too expensive," a ticketing executive told the BBC at Cuffe Parade station.The low ridership on this corridor is part of a broader trend confronting the breakneck expansion of India's metro network.Since 2014, the Narendra Modi government has splashed out over $26bn on building metro connectivity across nearly two dozen Indian cities. The network has grown fourfold from under 300km to more than 1,000km by 2025. Average daily ridership has also almost quadrupled from three million to over 11 million people in the last decade.But these grand aggregate numbers mask worrying underlying data.Most metro systems in India have failed to achieve even a sliver of the ridership projected during their planning stages, according to experts.An Indian Institute of Technology Delhi report from 2023 showed ridership of merely 25-35% of the projected figures across corridors. And these numbers are unlikely to have significantly chang...