Bye Bye Metro Man - Elattuvalapil Sreedharan

Elattuvalapil  Sreedharan 

A man of great vision and impeachable integrity, the Metro Man Elattuvalapil   Sreedharan, who retires on Saturday (Dec. 31, 2011), gave Delhi a “new identity” for which people of the city will always miss him.
His contribution to the city as Managing Director of DMRC in the last 16 years, transforming the whole public transport system and in the process changed the way Delhiites travel.
“The whole city will miss him. My government will miss him. I do not have words to offer our gratitude to him for giving us a wonderful metro network which is now being followed as a model network by various world cities,”  Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit said.

Shri M. Hamid Ansari, Vice President of India being presented model of
Metro train by the Chairman of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation,
Dr. E. Sreedharan, during his visit at Delhi Metro Museum,
in New Delhi on December 02, 2011.

The 79-year-old technocrat, who joined DMRC in 1995, has been credited with construction of 190 km network across the National Capital Region, which is now considered as fastest growing Metro network anywhere in the world. The metro currently ferries over 16 lakh passengers on week days through over 2,500 trips. Sreedharan has offered us one of the most reliable and modern metro network in the world and  we will remain thankful to Sreedharan for it.
Sreedharan was given four extension of services and earlier this year he had wriiten a letter to Dikshit asking her to find his successor well ahead of his retirement in December.

A high-level government panel had selected Mangu Singh, DMRC’s Director who oversaw the construction of the high-speed Airport Metro Express, to succeed Sreedharan. 56-year-old Singh, a civil engineer from Roorkee University, was Sreedharan’s choice to step into his shoes as the DMRC Managing Director. 
Singh is an Indian Railways Service of Engineers (IRSE) officer of the 1981 batch and worked with Sreedharan in the Kolkata Metro project. 
He has been associated with the Delhi Metro since its inception. Asked about phase III expansion of metro network, Dikshit said it would come up under the newly appinted DMRC chief. Top officials said Sreedharan will not be associated with DMRC in any capacity after his retirement as envisaged earlier.
Giving the masses an affordable, fast and comfortable mode of transport, the Delhi Metro with its nearly 200-km network, on Dec. 24, 2011 completed its nine years of operation across the National Capital Region.
Making its debut on a small 8-km stretch on December 24, 2002, the Delhi Metro slowly added several corridors to its network over the years bringing the satellite cities of Noida, Gurgaon and Ghaziabad closer to the city.

Metro Travel

The first ever Metro service started between Shahdara and Tis Hazari and since then the ridership has increased leaps and bounds to reach 20 lakh passengers a day.
In February, the Airport Express Line opened for commuter operations. On February 23, the services started for the commuters. With the opening of this 23.7 km long corridor, Delhi joined the elite list of global cities like Shanghai, Tokyo, London etc. which have direct Metro conductivity between the airport and the city centre. Another major achievement was the extension of the Metro to Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh. During the year, the DMRC was also involved in planning the next phase of Metro construction across the National Capital Region.