India, May 20 -- The platform at Rajiv Chowk on Tuesday morning looked the way it always does when something has gone wrong upstream. People pressed against the yellow line, a train sitting longer than it should at the platform, the announcement system repeating itself, and a quiet collective calculation spreading through the crowd: I am going to be late.

Metro Monday was supposed to be the beginning of something. The Delhi Government's campaign to reduce fuel consumption by encouraging citizens to leave their cars at home and take the Metro had its first official day on Monday, and by all accounts it worked, in the sense that more people came. What it did not do was come with additional train frequency, expanded platform capacity, or an...