Prime Minister Narendra Modi has highlighted the rapid expansion of India’s metro rail network, saying it has grown from just 248 kilometres across five cities in 2014 to nearly 1,200 kilometres across 26 cities today. In a post on social media platform X on Thursday, 5 November 2026, the Prime Minister said more than one crore people now travel by metro every day, and that the expansion has transformed urban mobility and improved the quality of life for millions of commuters.
“If India’s Metro network had continued expanding at the pace it did before 2014, how long would the wait be for cities like Pune to have a metro? YEARS… no… DECADES perhaps. And that was UNACCEPTABLE. In 2014, India had just 248 km of Metro lines across 5 cities. Today, we have nearly 1,200 km across 26 cities,” PM Modi wrote. The Prime Minister’s message underlined how the pace of metro construction changed after 2014, turning a network that once served a handful of cities into one of the largest urban rail systems in the world.
The Prime Minister’s post came two days after he inaugurated and laid the foundation stone of Pune Metro projects worth around Rs 21,800 crore through video conferencing on Tuesday. He inaugurated the 23.2-kilometre Pune Metro Line 3, also known as the Pink Line, an elevated corridor connecting Maan and Hinjewadi, the city’s IT hub, to Shivajinagar and the District Court Metro station. The line was built at a cost of over Rs 8,300 crore and is expected to ease daily travel for thousands of IT professionals and students who commute to Hinjewadi, one of India’s largest technology parks.
At the same event, the Prime Minister laid the foundation stone of Phase-II of the Pune Metro, to be developed at an estimated cost of around Rs 13,500 crore. The expansion will extend metro connectivity to more parts of the city and link growing residential and employment hubs with the existing network. Together, the inaugurated line and the new phase mark one of the largest single metro investments in Maharashtra, and the Prime Minister presented them as an example of how quickly urban transport infrastructure is now being built.
The growth of the metro network reflects a wider push to modernise urban transport across the country. Metro systems now operate in 26 cities, from Delhi and Mumbai to smaller cities that had no rapid transit a decade ago. For daily commuters, the metro has cut travel time, reduced dependence on private vehicles and buses, and offered a reliable alternative to congested roads. With more than one crore passenger journeys every day, the network has become a backbone of urban life in India’s biggest cities.
The Prime Minister has repeatedly linked metro expansion to the broader vision of developed, modern cities, where public transport keeps pace with economic growth. As new lines open and new cities join the network, the government says the focus remains on faster construction, better last-mile connectivity and affordable fares, so that the metro reaches more people in more cities in the years ahead.
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