Delhi’s first ‘ad Metro’ gets a warm welcome

NOIDA : Hundreds of commuters started their day a little differently on Saturday by travelling on the first Delhi Metro train wrapped in an advertisement.
Many gave a thumbs up to the longest moving billboard covering approximately 6,500 square feet.
The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation’s (DMRC) six-coach train chugged into the Yamuna Bank Metro station at 11.45am with advertisements of a Noida-based realtor wrapped on its exterior.The first train to be covered in a high-quality vinyl wrap on its exterior was inducted into passenger service on the Dwarka–Vaishali route of Blue Line ie Line 3/4 (Dwarka Sector 21–Noida City Centre/Vaishali) towards Vaishali. On Friday, the Delhi Metro had staged a trial run between Yamuna Bank in Delhi and the Noida City Centre station.
Reacting to the train wrap, a first for Delhi and Noida, commuters said that it was a pleasant surprise to see the train with a different exterior. “At first I thought the train was not for passengers but when I saw passengers alighting from it, I boarded the train too,” said Rahul Sharma, a commuter who got into the train in Dwarka. “The designers of the advertisement seem to have paid close attention to the colour schemes and quality of the wrap, adding to the ambience of the train,” said Himani Singh, another commuter travelling to Vaishali.
According to DMRC officials, 15 such trains will be inducted into service initially with seven on Line 2, ie Jahangirpuri–HUDA City Centre and eight on Line 3/4, which are the busiest lines of the Delhi Metro network. “Another of our trains will be inducted on Line 2 next week,” said a DMRC official. “Initially only six-coach trains are being wrapped. Gradually, trains on other corridors will also be covered,” he said.
Currently, the DMRC operates a fleet of over 200 train sets with over 60 eight-coach trains and over 80 six-coach trains. The ‘train wraps’ have been permitted on 10% of the total train sets available on the operational lines of Delhi Metro network.