NEW DELHI: The trial runs on the 17 km long priority corridor of the Delhi-Meerut Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS) are all set to begin in a few days between Sahibabad and Duhai, MD of the National Capital Region Transport Corporation (NCRTC) Vinay Kumar Singh said on Tuesday.
The trial run will begin in two weeks’ time. Singh said that the priority corridor will be operational by March 2024 whereas the entire 82km-long corridor connecting Delhi and Meerut will be ready by June 2025. The NCRTC plans to start operating trains at a 10-minute frequency to cover the distance between Sahibabad and Duhai in 55 minutes.
The distance between Duhai and Meerut South Station is about 25 km where the construction of the viaduct has been completed. The total length of up and down lines in this section is 50 km, of which more than half of the tracks have been laid.
Apart, traction works like mast cantilever erection etc. are being carried out. Presently, track-laying activities are moving ahead on a war footing. Singh said that the transit system is designed to operate trains without a stop as well as trains with a limited number of stops along with regular trains, and this will further reduce travel time.
The managing director also informed that while all trains will run on the same track, they have provision for trains to bypass other trains in certain areas such as Ghaziabad, therefore operating trains with a limited number of halts will further reduce the travel time between Delhi and Meerut. The four RRTS stations in Delhi will be at Jangpura, Sarai Kale Khan, New Ashok Nagar and Anand Vihar.
NCRTC has decided on transit-oriented development on vacant land available in Anand Vihar, Jangpura and Sarai Kale Khan. “At Jangpura, we plan to have housing facilities for sale along with commercial development, while at the other two locations, we will have only commercial development,” Singh said.
The tunnelling of the entire Delhi-Ghaziabad-Meerut corridor concluded with the completion of the 2 km long tunnel between Anand Vihar towards Sahibabad in August 2023. A total of 4 tunnels have been constructed in Delhi from Anand Vihar underground RAPIDX station for to and fro movement of trains.
Two parallel tunnels, each approximately 3 kilometres long, are for connecting Anand Vihar station to New Ashok Nagar station and approximately 2-kilometer-long parallel tunnels are for connecting Anand Vihar station to Sahibabad station.
The NCRTC plans to construct the RRTS corridor in three phases. In the first phase, a 107km stretch from Sarai Kale Khan in Delhi to Shahjahanpur- Neemrana-Behror (SNB) Urban Complex — just ahead of Bawal in Haryana — passing through Gurugram, Manesar, Panchgaon and Rewari will be constructed.