Work On Anand Vihar And Sarai Kale Khan Stations On Delhi-Meerut RRTS To Finish Soon

Two stations at the core of the interstate, high-speed Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS) rail project in the national capital—Anand Vihar and Sarai Kale Khan—are nearing completion, reports The Hindu.

The 82-km-long Delhi-Ghaziabad-Meerut Corridor is the first RRTS corridor being implemented in India. The corridor will reduce the commute time from Delhi to Meerut to less than an hour from 3-4 hours by road at present, aboard trains moving at a speed of up to 180 km per hour.

The project is being executed by the National Capital Region Transport Corporation (NCRTC) which works under the administrative control of Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs.

It is a joint venture of the Government of India (50 per cent) and State Governments of Haryana (12.5 per cent), NCT Delhi (12.5 per cent), Uttar Pradesh (12.5 per cent) and Rajasthan (12.5 per cent).

The Delhi-Meerut RRTS corridor has 25 stations including nine stations for Meerut Mass Rapid Transit System (MRTS), of which 70 km is elevated and 12 km is underground.

Around 14 km of the RRTS is in Delhi of which 9.22 km is elevated and 4.28 km underground. Sarai Kale Khan and New Ashok Nagar are elevated while Anand Vihar is the only underground station.

Anand Vihar Station

The work at the concourse-level has been completed on Anand Vihar Station, and the construction of the platform level is nearing completion.

The report added that the track-laying work will begin at this station over the coming days, with work at the concourse-level having been completed.

The upcoming Anand Vihar RRTS station has the distinction of being the only station in the route to be constructed only one level below the ground level.

Most underground stations are constructed two levels below the ground making it sufficiently deep. In the preliminary detailed project report, the station was planned to be constructed at 15 m below the ground. 

However, it was decided to redesign the Anand Vihar RRTS station as an 8-metre-deep station with the concourse level shifted to the ground level, in order to avoid the existing foundation of Metro infrastructure.

Sarai Kale Khan Station

Work on 38 of the 39 piers of Sarai Kale Khan station has been completed. The construction of six platforms is going to commence. It will have four tracks for four different routes—Meerut, Gurugram, Panipat and Jangpura.

The elevated Sarai Kale Khan RRTS station will provide connectivity to the Delhi-Panipat and Delhi-Alwar corridors under Phase I, allowing passengers to travel between stations in different corridors.

The size of this converging station is 215 m long, 50 m wide and 15 m high where all three corridors of Phase I will converge and remain interoperable. This is a first-of-its-kind seamless commuter-centric facility being constructed in India.

Operational By 2025

The Delhi-Meerut RRTS consists of a 17-km-long priority section between Sahibabad and Duhai. The priority section has a total of five stations—Sahibabad, Ghaziabad, Vasundhara, Guldhar, Duhai and Duhai depot.

The priority section between Sahibabad to Duhai depot will be operational for public use by March next year. NCRTC further targets to commission the entire Delhi-Meerut RRTS corridor by 2025.

The NCRTC is gearing up to commence the trial runs of RRTS trains in the Priority Section by the end of next month.

Two RRTS trainsets have reached Duhai Depot from the manufacturing plant at Savli, Gujarat, and at present, various dynamic and static testing are being carried out on these.