NEW DELHI: From a relatively quiet station till about five years ago, the Botanical Garden metro station has emerged as the second busiest on the Delhi Metro network, edging out Rajiv Chowk and rapidly closing the gap with Kashmere Gate, which tops the ridership charts. While Kashmere Gate’s daily footfall in 2022 is nearly 2 lakh, over 1.8 lakh people change trains daily at Botanical Garden between the Blue (Dwarka-Noida) and Magenta (Botanical Garden-Janakpuri West) Lines. Rajiv Chowk’s footfall is 1.7 lakh. Part of the Blue Line, Botanical Garden became the first interchange station outside the national capital when the Magenta Line was inaugurated by PM Modi on December 25, 2017. From 79,000 in January 2018, the daily footfall rose to 1.6 lakh by June, making it the fourth busiest station. By June 2019, it had climbed to third position with a daily footfall of over 1.8 lakh. In 2021, at the pandemic’s peak, its footfall fell to 87,640. However, it edged out Rajiv Chowk to claim second spot. More catchment areas make new interchange point a hit New Delhi: Following an overall fall in ridership during Covid, Delhi Metro last month regained nearly 75% of its pre-pandemic footfall. The Botanical Garden station catered to 1,84,335 commuters, second only to Kashmere Gate, which saw a footfall of 1,99,303. Kashmere Gate is the only interchange station in the network that caters to three corridors – the Yellow (Samaypur Badli-Huda City Centre), Red (Rithala-Shaheed Sthal New Bus Adda) and Violet (Kashmere Gate-Raja Nahar Singh, Ballabhgarh) Lines. “Comparatively, new interchange stations have left behind interchange stations like Rajiv Chowk and Central Secretariat that were once extremely busy owing to redistribution of commuters. With the addition of these stations in the network, commuters have more options now,” a Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) official said. “That is why Botanical Garden and Hauz Khas interchange stations have seen an increase in footfall in a relatively short time,” he added. What can also explain Botanical Garden metro station’s upward mobility is the Blue Line’s extension to Electronic City, which has taken it to NH9/Delhi-Meerut Expressway and the doorstep of Ghaziabad, and its interface with the Aqua Line at Sector 52, which has significantly widened its catchment area. The average daily footfall of Noida’s Aqua Line is 40,000. The extended Blue Line is also a short drive from Greater Noida West, or Noida Extension, and the 7x sectors, whose population has risen significantly in recent years with flats held up for a long time getting delivered and people who invested in houses there but lived elsewhere shifting to save on rents as the pandemic hit incomes. The Blue Line is the main metro corridor for this vast urban area and anyone who needs to go to Delhi or Gurgaon has to travel via Botanical Garden, either continuing on the Blue Line, towards Mandi House, Rajiv Chowk, Karol Bagh and Dwarka, or changing over to the Magenta Line, which connects important stations like Hauz Khas and IGI’s Terminal 1. Botanical Garden and the adjacent Sector 37 are also junctions for roadways and private buses that travel between Noida, Delhi and Greater Noida or the NCR cities and other parts of UP. Besides, for the large population living along Noida’s expressway sectors and around Pari Chowk in Greater Noida, Botanical Garden is the nearest metro junction. Botanical Garden will become busier still when another metro line proposed to originate from here takes shape – the Aqua Line’s expressway extension that will branch out from Sector 142. Surveys have happened for that line and station locations have been drawn up but there’s no construction timeline yet. In a couple of years, the Magenta Line is also going to be extended from Janakpuri West to RK Ashram Marg. (With inputs from Shafaque Alam)
Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/delhi-botanical-garden-edges-out-rajiv-chowk-as-2nd-busiest-metro-station/articleshow/94209924.cms