Post-COVID-19 performance evaluation of urban metro transit system in Delhi and influence on access mode

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been observed to affect the travel patterns, routes and traffic in public transportation systems across the world. It is important to evaluate the performance of the Delhi Metro (DM) post-COVID-19 pandemic for its successful operation. In this study, the BLUE line of DM with the longest route and highest number of metro stations has been examined for performance evaluation. The performance is evaluated based on travel time components (access, egress, transfer, waiting and main haul time) to calculate various performance indicators i.e., Level of Service (LOS), Service Time Ratio (STR), Passengers Waiting Index (PWI), Total Travel Ratio (TTR) and Interconnectivity Ratio (IR). The post-COVID-19 LOS evaluation indicates that the users are spending 72.6 % to 84.4 % of their main haul time on their access-egress trips. The STR shows that the users are spending 10.9 % to 12.6 % of their total travel time in waiting and transferring only during the main haul trip. The mean PWI, RI and TTR are noted as 1.008, 0.794 and 2.069 respectively. The IR is observed as 0.312 for the given route. The median and average main haul distances across all access modes are observed to be (12-21) Km. and (19.69 ± 11.19) Km. respectively. It is revealed that the observed mean value of LOS is (0.775 ± 0.575). It is further revealed that the metro fare per trip and the access-egress trip cost per day are significant factors for access mode choice in the case of walking and auto-rickshaw whereas LOS, RI and PWI are other significant operator's performance indicators influencing the access mode choice. The study reveals that post-COVID-19 the performance indicators exhibit the unsatisfactory performance of DM and there is further scope to improve the UMTS performance.