Lucknow: Good news for Metro commuters who use to travel between Delhi to Meerut as soon they will take less than 60 minutes once the Delhi-Meerut high-speed rail becomes a reality as Lucknow Metro director announced recently that Delhi Metro will extend its network till Meerut.
The Railways’ new ambitious plan is to make double use of a high-speed rail corridor from Delhi to run local metro services to Meerut with the same.
Originally, Corridor 1 of the Meerut metro was supposed to have 16 stations passing from the same areas as the National Capital Region Transport Corporation Limited’s (NCRTC) high-speed network.
Under the new proposed Regional Rail Transit system project, the NCRTC’s network, instead of overlapping with this part of the proposed Meerut Metro rail, will cut through it.
According to the new design, the 92.6-km Regional Rail Transit system long corridor will connect the metro network of Delhi at the Sarai Kale Khan on the Pink Line with the Meerut metro at Partapur, reports the journalists. So there will be no need to build two railways for the same path.
In first of kind India will soon get its interstate Metro between two cities:
The NCRTC will be the executing authority for the project. It will be responsible for building six more stations in Meerut and parallel tracks to accommodate the city’s metro trains.
“It has now been decided that in Meerut, we will construct parallel lines and metro trains will be purchased for that. While the RRTS train will not stop at these extra stations, there will be interchange facility at six other stations where the rapid train from Delhi will stop,” one of NCRTC’s spokespersons told media persons.
This move will not only help the government save over Rs 6,300 crore but also decongest the heavy road traffic on the 90-km stretch between the two cities.
The original estimated cost for Corridor I of the Meerut metro from Partapur to Modipuram was Rs 8388 crore. But after its integration into the RRTS network, the cost has come down to Rs 2,100 crore.
Once this Regional Rail Transit system is built, it will effectively allow faster commute between Meerut and Delhi for over 740000 passengers from an existing travel time of 150 minutes to less than 60 minutes.
The construction is expected to begin by July 2018.
