RRTS project: For its Duhai depot, transport corp to buy land directly from farmers

Land for the Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS) depot at Duhai will be purchased directly purchased now from the respective owners, the National Capital Region

Land for the Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS) depot at Duhai will be purchased directly purchased now from the respective owners, the National Capital Region Transport Corporation (NCRTC) said, instead of the earlier plan to procure the same from the Ghaziabad development authority (GDA), at its Madhuban Bapudham housing scheme project.

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This means that the transport corporation will now buy the 51 hectares of land that it needs, directly from farmers.

Officials said the depot at Duhai will also have a station nearby. The 17km Sahibabad-Duhai stretch, in Ghaziabad, was declared as a priority corridor and this will be the first one to be completed, likely by 2023. The entire corridor, 82km in total, will be completed by 2025.

Deliberations for procuring land for the Duhai depot had been going on since December last year and NCRTC had approached GDA for its land requirement at the Madhuban Bapudham housing scheme. However, the plan now stands dropped and the NCRTC will now purchase 51 hectares of land directly from farmers.

Originally, the depot was scheduled over an area of 60 hectares but officials said they fine tuned and optimised the depot area to fit into 51 hectares.

“Public notice for procuring land from farmers has been issued, as is procedure. Land will now be purchased directly from farmers. The Duhai depot will be constructed at its originally proposed location (at the side going towards Meerut, on the Delhi Meerut Road). There were complexities at GDA’s Madhuban Bapudham scheme and the matter could not be seen through,” said Sudhir Sharma, chief PRO of NCRTC.

Officials of the authority said they could not offer land due to certain issues. “The main reason was that carving out one single chunk of land for the depot was not feasible, as land was available in fragments. The plan is now dropped,” said Asheesh Shivpuri, chief architect and town planner of GDA.

The entire RRTS project, which is proposed to run high speed trains on elevated and underground sections, is set to cost about ₹30,274 crore. The project will connect Delhi, Ghaziabad and Meerut and will have 24 stations, including 21 in Uttar Pradesh.

The NCRTC has also planned an RRTS station near the Duhai depot.

“To ease commuting in the densely populated areas of NCR, we have planned that an alternate train will go up to Duhai depot (from Delhi) and return while another alternate train will go up to Meerut. Having a train return from Duhai itself (instead of going all the way to Meerut) will mean that people in densely populated areas will be able to get trains at a frequency of about five minutes, while the other trains to Meerut will be available at a frequency of about 10 minutes,” Sharma added.

NCRTC officials said that once the priority section is done, they will open it up for passenger operations which will further help them assess any further requirements for the entire corridor.

RRTS trains will run at a speed of 180kmph. In Meerut, NCRTC has also proposed to run metro trains along RRTS trains.

Apart from the work going on at full speed for the priority stretch, civil construction works for the 33km Duhai-Shatabdipuram stretch in Meerut has also started.

Earlier in August, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) also approved a loan of $1 billion to support the RRTS project.