The domestic terminal of Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport will get a Metro station by the end of the year, plugging a crucial hole in the Delhi’s transport system and bringing relief to flyers from NCR.
Terminal 1D that serves low-cost domestic carriers will be on the 34.2km-long Janakpuri West (Delhi)-Botanical Garden (Noida) corridor, which is expected to begin trial runs by September.
Residents of Dwarka and some others parts of west Delhi will get to the airport in under half an hour. The travel time from Noida will be just 35 minutes, says DMRC. A drive takes at least an hour on a good traffic day.
“The proposed Terminal 1 Metro station will be an underground station … It will help the domestic passengers in a major way,” said a spokesperson of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC).
Though everyday around 30,000 people fly in and out of Terminal ID, which is used by IndiGo, SpiceJet and GoAir, it doesn’t have direct Metro connection. The airport operator plans to expand the terminal to accommodate 30 million passengers a year.
DMRC runs feeder buses that connect the Aerocity Metro station, which is serviced by the airport express, to Terminal 1D. The airport express is exclusively for Terminal 3, better known as T3, which handles all international and some local flights.
The Janakpuri West–Botanical Garden line will allow residents of satellite towns of Noida in Uttar Pradesh and Faridabad and Gurgaon in Haryana to use Metro to get to the domestic airport, which will be much more economical, both in terms of money and time.
The line is part of the phase 3 of Metro expansion and is due to get operational before the year ends.
South Delhi areas such as Vasant Vihar, Munirka, Kalkaji, Hauz Khas and RK Puram will be connected to 1D directly. Those coming from Faridabad can change for the airport at Kalkaji and from Gurgaon at Hauz Khas station.
Hauz Khas can also be the change station for passengers from north and central Delhi.
Residents of east Delhi areas such as Laxmi Nagar, Preet Vihar and Anand Vihar and Ghaziabad will have the option of several stations to get to 1D.
As Janakpuri West will be one of the starting points, residents of west Delhi and those using the Blue Line, which connects Dwarka to Noida City Centre, will benefit greatly from the new corridor. Janakpuri West is also a station on the Blue Line.
source: Hindustan times
