New Delhi Metro figures among CNN’s 18 best metros in the World

NEW YORK: A great metro system is much more than a railway: it changes how a city grows, where people live and work, how businesses attract customers, and how public spaces evolve.

The Delhi Metro illustrates this transformation particularly well. Unlike the older networks of London, Paris and New York, it has expanded within little more than two decades into a vast regional transport system, while introducing automated trains and helping reshape the commercial geography of the National Capital Region.

One important distinction needs to be made at the outset: Delhi Metro is among the world’s largest and fastest-expanding urban rail networks, but the claim that it is the world’s second-largest metro requires qualification. Rankings change depending on whether one measures route length, track length, stations, daily passengers or the combined networks of neighbouring cities. Shanghai and Beijing, for example, operate exceptionally extensive systems of their own.