On 1st August 2023, Pune metro was inaugurated by our Prime Minister. It was partially operational since March 2022, but it didn’t serve any useful purpose of connecting important parts of the two cities of Pimpri-Chinchwad and Pune – only a joyride. In the current state, it connects important parts of the cities. The current operational lines part of the first phase have still sections under construction, whose 100% completion will take about year or so as per the official estimates.

I’ve hardly visited the core areas of Pune city because I’ve always lived in Pimpri-Chinchwad and there was no necessity as such to go to those areas. With time, the traffic also increased disproportionately that it didn’t make any sense to go there and struggle for parking.

I wanted to buy some cloth for myself, so thought let’s take a ride in the metro and go to Laxmi road, which is one of the best places for shopping in Pune.

So I drove to the PCMC (Pimpri-Chinchwad municipal corporation) metro station, parked there and took the metro to Civil Court. This one is Purple line which will be further extended up to Swargate. There is a station near to Laxmi road on this route, but the metro is operational only till Civil court.

From Civil court I hopped on to the Aqua line metro which passes by Pune municipal corporation office, the nearest point one can reach for going to Laxmi road at present (once Purple line is fully operational, you could get down at Budhwar Peth & walk). From here, Laxmi road is about 10 minute ride in an autorickshaw.

It was a good experience. A metro railway for Pune was in the discussion for more than 10-15 years, but construction was started only in 2017. Witnessing the construction, enduring the traffic jams and taking ride in the metro, it’s been 6 long years from 2017 to 2023.

The ticketing is not the best experience, they have used a QR code based system wherein your printed or e-ticket will have a QR on it which has to be scanned at the automatic doors before entering the platform. One can imagine how awkward it will be to hold the phone screen facing towards the camera on the gate & patiently wait for it to open. It doesn’t recognize it under low brightness and scanning is slow – this causes unnecessary crowding at the gate when a train comes & a lot of people get down. I wonder what made them decide to use QR based system instead of NFC/RF coin/token based which is present in Delhi metro and even in Bangalore metro.

The total end to end travel time including shopping was exactly 3 hours. Travel time in metro from PCMC to Civil court is ~25 minutes and Civil court to PMC is ~5 minutes. Now, for me, the PCMC metro station itself is about 3 km, so going there takes about 15 minutes. Changing lines at Civil court about 7 minutes. So total time taken to travel from Home to PMC is 25 + 5 + 7 = 37 minutes + any waiting times for the trains.

Driving time is almost similar ~40-50 minutes for the same distance (Home to PMC bhavan). So time wise, it doesn’t make much of a difference for me, which is great because it’s much cheaper to go by the metro. As per my calculation it would have taken about ₹120 worth fuel for driving from home to PMC, but by metro it costs me only ₹42 including the fuel cost of reaching PCMC metro station. It may not be as cheap, if I have to take an auto from my home to PCMC metro station.

A nice thing about the metro is as of now, they seem to be allowing people to carry bicycles. But I’m not sure how feasible this will be because if one doesn’t even get a place to sit, how can one comfortably carry a bicycle in the train? I’ll give it a try sometime & perhaps make another post. The commute cost drastically reduces in that case.

Public transport in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad has always been pathetic, your personal mobility is screwed if you don’t have your own vehicle. The bus services are unreliable – frequency is poor. Suburban railways by the Indian railways are run at a frequency of more than 1 hour. Autorickshaws will never ply by meter, they will simply refuse or ask for exorbitant money to ferry you for a small distance. The area in which I’ve been living at present for more than a decade has seen little improvement in bus frequency.

Pune was once known as a cycle city: a testimony of this fact can be seen at Vikram Pendse cycle museum, a must visit if history interests you. Now the cities have one of the largest scooter/motorbike population. Hopefully, the metro changes this status quo and puts a brake on the increasing two and four wheeler population which people have to buy as a necessity and instead use the public transport which is good for the people and environment.

I wish the frequency of the trains is every 5 minutes instead of every 10 and 15 minutes in non-peak & peak hours, but this will of course be subject to passenger load & financial viability. Also, good connectivity to local areas around every station by e-rickshaws or buses. They have started metro feeder buses, but the one in my area is once an hour, kind of useless. It’s been less than a week since the official launch and obviously things will be clean & well maintained, hopefully it remains so in the coming years for the benefit of general public.