The struggle to move

Opportunities don't come often. So, it hurts if you live in Ghaziabad or Noida and must hitch an auto ride or wait for a bus to grab one.

Opportunities don't come often. So, it hurts if you live in Ghaziabad or Noida and must hitch an auto ride or wait for a bus to grab one.

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The two industrial townships built on the foundation of economic promise offer tremendous opportunities. But they don't offer you good public transport systems. Both cities — characterised by a boom in almost all frontiers, from population to cars to commerce — have nothing but rickety auto-rickshaws and worn down buses to offer as modes of transport.

A sustainable local transport network is missing in both cities. Ghaziabad, which lacks even a credible bus service, is the worse of the two. By 2011, when over two million people will start using the metro's 190-kilometre network in the Capital, only a few thousand people in Ghaziabad, living in the peripheral colonies of Kaushambi and Vaishali, will benefit from the 2.57-kilometre Anand Vihar-Vaishali section.

Though the reach of the Noida section of the metro — about seven kilometres — is relatively better, it only benefits the 16 sectors that fall on the metro route.