Country's First RRTS: Rs 11,440 Crore Spent On Delhi-Meerut Corridor Till 30 November

A total of Rs 11,440 crore has been spent on Delhi-Meerut RRTS project till 30 November, the government told Rajya Sabha on Monday (19 December).

The Delhi-Meerut Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS) project is a dedicated, high speed, high capacity, comfortable commuter service, connecting the national capital with Meerut and is being implemented by National Capital Region Transport Corporation (NCRTC).

Replying to a query in the Upper House, Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Kaushal Kishore said the total sanctioned cost of the project is Rs 30,274 crore.

As on 30 November 2022, the balance fund with NCRTC for implementing the project is Rs 1,084.10 crore, he said.

Funding

The project is being funded jointly by the centre and the state government of Uttar Pradesh and Delhi and three external agencies — Asian Development Bank (ADB), New Development Bank (NDB) and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

Shanghai-headquartered New Development Bank (NDB) has approved $500 million (approximately ₹3,700 crore) in loan for funding the Delhi-Ghaziabad-Meerut RRTS project. The loan from the NDB has a tenor of 25 years with an eight-year grace period.

The 82-km corridor is being co-financed under a parallel financing arrangement with ADB and AIIB.

In September 2020, a loan agreement of $500 million was signed with ADB for funding the RRTS corridor.

Commissioning By 2025

The RRTS project is proposed to link the three cities of Delhi, Ghaziabad and Meerut through high-speed trains, having a design speed of 180 kmph with 160 kmph of operational speed and an average of 100 kmph running speed.

It will be connecting Sarai Kale Khan in Delhi to Modipuram in Meerut in Uttar Pradesh, with 25 stations en route of which 22 are in the jurisdiction of the state of Uttar Pradesh and three in Delhi.

The entire project is scheduled to get commissioned in March 2025. A 17-km-long priority section between Sahibabad and Duhai of the corridor is scheduled to commence operations in 2023.

The priority section has four stations — Sahibabad, Ghaziabad, Guldhar and Duhai. It is expected to be operationalised by March next year, NCRTC’s managing director Vinay Kumar Singh said last month.

As per NCRTC, various static and dynamic tests are in progress according to the schedule for commissioning of the priority section (between Duhai to Sahibabad) of the Delhi-Meerut RRTS corridor.