A Race Against Time To Complete New Delhi’s Newest Subway Line | Popular Science.

Another Megapixels writeup from the February issue of Popular Science. This one was interesting because it was about the Delhi Metro; given that I went to high school in Delhi and visit their regularly, I’ve actually seen the Metro being constructed, although I have yet to ride in it. But it looks very impressive, and unlike a lot of Indian construction projects, it’s actually been proceeding smoothly and on schedule!

So I jumped at the opportunity to find out a little bit more about how the subway tunnels were dug, particularly in a crowded city full of medieval monuments. The technical details I found out were fairly impressive, as was the fact that I was able to gather some details from news releases present on the Delhi Metro’s website. What wasn’t that great was my inability to get any response from anyone at the Delhi Metro, despite their having a communication officer – I’m not sure why they have the email addresses, and noone ever picked up the phone, but I guess it wasn’t that surprising to be unable to get a reply from the vast Indian bureaucracy 🙂 I probably would have needed to be in Delhi, and wait patiently at the person’s office while I bugged them enough to actual get the information directly from them – it probably requires a level of persistence just not possible by email or long-distance phone calls.

Oh well, I was able to get technical papers and talk to enough other people that I don’t think the article suffered, and it certainly was a learning experience in how to manage when your primary source doesn’t respond.