Early history at the City Centre arcade, Salt Lake, Kolkata|190x190px|left The first-ever mode of the urban rail transit system in India was
commuter rail (or suburban rail), built in
Mumbai on 16 April 1853. The first passenger train was flagged off from
Bori Bunder (present-day
Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus in
Mumbai) from where it travelled to
Thane, covering a distance of 34 km in an hour and fifteen minutes. This made it the
Asia's first
suburban railway. At the turn of the 20th century, tram systems began to sprawl across the four major cities of India, viz. Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai, and helped local population to meet their intracity transportation needs. Horse-drawn
tram was first introduced in
Kolkata in 1873 and the electric trams began to operate in
Chennai in 1895, later the cities of
Mumbai,
Kanpur, and
Delhi saw trams being introduced. These services were discontinued in all Indian cities between 1933 and 1964, except for
Kolkata where they operate on streets to the present day as heritage.
Metro and mass rapid transit In September 1919, during a session of the Imperial Legislative Council at
Shimla, a committee was set up by
W. E. Crum that recommended a metro line for Kolkata. The next proposal for a metro system was mooted by
government of West Bengal in 1949-50 and a survey was conducted by French experts. However, the proposal could not be brought into the effect and India had to wait for its first metro service. It was twenty three years later when the foundation stone was laid in Kolkata in 1972 to commence the construction of the ambitious metro system. On 24 October 1984, India saw its
first metro system operational in Kolkata. After several struggles and bureaucratic hurdles, a stretch of 3.4 km was opened with five stations on the line. On 1 November 1995, the
Chennai MRTS began its operations, becoming the first fully
elevated railway line and also the country's longest elevated suburban railway corridor spanning 18 km on the elevated section alone of total 24.3 km. The first concept of an urban rapid transit system in Delhi came out during 1969, when a traffic and travel characteristics study was conducted. The bus systems which catered the public transportation in the city soon began to run out of capacity and the traffic was on the rise, this soon became a growing concern. The concepts for an urban transit system were considered as the need for the country's capital. With , the
Delhi Metro went on to be the longest and by far the busiest metro system in India, which also served as a role model to other Indian cities.
Monorails and their replacement While the political capital of India was expanding on its success by constructing new metro lines, suburban railways remained as the dominant mode of transport in the financial capital, Mumbai. According to
Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) the city bus services operating in narrow and crowded areas of the city were slow-moving and caused traffic congestion hence a rapid transit system was necessary. Since the city already had planned metro services and since the suburban railways also connected major parts of the city, a feeder system to these services was proposed in the form of
Monorail. After the construction was completed, On 1 February 2014,
Mumbai Monorail became the first of its kind in India. In the early 2010s, many cities had conceived the plan to build monorails as the major urban transportation solution to their cities. However, Mumbai's monorail soon began to reveal the underlying problems of a monorail system. The issues such as low ridership, inefficient track maintenance (accessibility of the tracks during maintenance as well as the time taken to repair the tracks), train slowing down at the switches and for the fact that the monorail tracks had to be entirely elevated with a dedicated depot and set of rolling stocks, raised the concerns on feasibility, cost of construction and operation of the new lines significantly. For the similar reasons, almost all of the monorail systems around the world are seen in
amusement parks or similar theme parks instead as a solution to the urban public transportation. A traditional light rail system soon emerged as the efficient mode but with cheaper cost and greater capacity than what monorail offered. As a result, many Indian cities replaced their proposed monorail projects with either a regular metro or a light rail system. == Rapid transit ==