Launch day, finally! After what has seemed like an interminable wait, the train is set to roll across the city. And Bangalore will be a Metro city. But what exactly does that mean? And how will it change the city in the years ahead?

In the short run, nothing much will change, and we have to accept that. Metro's value is critically dependent on longer stretches of track, and until we can get the underground mid-section built in the north-south as well as east-west directions, we can't hope for the high volumes of ridership that other Metro cities see. That means we're into 2014 or so, before full realisation of the value of Phase I can be expected.

That's about three years. In that time, the city will add about a million people, and the likely passenger ridership on the trains by then is likely to be half that number, if the data from other cities are used as a guidelines. So, the Metro will help when Phase I is fully completed, but it will also not be sufficient to keep up with growing demand for mobility services.

In parallel, other things are bound to happen. BMTC needs to add about 5000 buses in the next three years. The Bus Rapid Transit system on the Outer Ring Road should be completed in the same timeframe as Phase I of Metro. The road infrastructure beyond the ring road is already improving, and could get even further. All in all, there is bound to be a continuous battle between demand and supply for both road and track.

One of the big failures of the past has been the inability to keep up with demand, leaving the city constantly back-logged for infrastructure. That will continue, I'm afraid, until either the Centre or the State decides to make a massive (and meaningful) push for real change in the megacities. JnNURM-like eye candy will be useless.

One other thing will happen, as a result of Metro. The city will get more 'direction-oriented', especially in the outlying areas. This should help aggregate services and reduce the need for 'cross-town' travel. It will also mean that in different directions from the city centre, the metropolis will acquire very different cultural, social and economic appearances. This is already evident to anyone heading towards Whitefield on the Old Airport Road.

One question on a lot of minds is: will Metro bring rich and poor together in shared physical spaces, the way we are now seeing in Delhi? This is possible, but only if land use development by BBMP and BMRDA (one hopes BDA will be closed by then) takes full note of the mobility plans, and integrates housing development properly with the transport agenda.

For that we will need a Metropolitan Planning Committee for regional planning. That was mandated in law in 1992, and we're still waiting for it. Every train, it seems, is late.