The 82km-long RRTS project is being constructed at a cost of ₹30,274 crore and proposes high-speed train connectivity between the three cities. The country’s first RRTS route, a 17km priority section, is in the advanced stages of development in Ghaziabad--officials said that the civil construction work is about 90% complete-- and will be the first to be operationalised in March, 2023.

“We have taken up the project on a priority basis and the civil construction and systems are being installed at a rapid pace. Once the 17km section is operationalised, the corridor may be extended for operation further into the jurisdiction of Uttar Pradesh towards Meerut. This will be helpful for a greater number of passengers and the RRTS will have a wider reach before the entire project is commissioned in March, 2025,” said Puneet Vats, chief public relations officer of NCRTC.

Officials said that the estimated ridership of the RRTS is about 800,000 passengers per day once the project becomes fully operational. It will reduce the travelling time to about 55 minutes.

Officials familiar with the development said on condition of anonymity that after Duhai in Ghaziabad, the RRTS will be extended up to Shatabdi Nagar in Meerut and may open by the end of 2023, if work continues to proceed at the same pace.

The distance between Duhai and Shatabdi Nagar is about 32km.

The test runs and trials of the RRTS trains are likely to start in the next few months and the first set of coaches is likely to reach Ghaziabad in one week. The coaches have been manufactured at a facility at Savli, Gujarat.

The RRTS project has three stations and one stabling yard in Delhi, while there are 12 stations in UP including the depot at Duhai. Of the 12 stations, eight are in Ghaziabad while four are in Meerut.

The NCRTC also plans to operationalise Metro services at 13 stations (over a distance of 21km from Meerut (South) to Modipuram) of which four will be used for RRTS trains.

“The NCRTC has completed constructing 41km of the 82km-long corridor. Around 70km of the corridor will be elevated and 12km will be underground. About 2,800 piers are to be constructed for the entire elevated section of the corridor, of which around 1,700 piers have already been constructed. The viaduct construction has been completed for 25km of the corridor, including 16km of the priority section,” Vats added.

Once the different stretches of the RRTS project are operationalised, they are likely to impact air quality positively, officials said, adding the Delhi-Ghaziabad-Meerut RRTS corridor is expected to reduce CO2 emissions by about 250,000 tonnes per year.