India and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) today signed a 500 million US dollar loan for Delhi-Meerut Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS) corridor.The first tranche of a total one  billion dollar  facility, to build a modern, high-speed 82-kilometer Delhi-Meerut RRTS corridor will improve regional connectivity and mobility in India’s national capital region (NCR).

The signatories to the loan agreement for the Delhi-Meerut RRTS Investment Project were  Sameer Kumar Khare, Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Finance and Kenichi Yokoyama, Country Director of ADB’s India Resident Mission who signed for ADB. The first tranche loan will support construction of the first of three priority rail corridors planned under the NCR Regional Plan 2021 to connect Delhi to other cities in adjoining states.

Mr Khare said, the project will provide better connectivity to allow other towns in the NCR to develop as urban economic centers surrounded by residential areas while easing the concentration pressure on Delhi. He said, development of this corridor will have a huge demonstration effect and pave the way for a paradigm shift in mobility and the pattern of urban development within the region.

With a design speed of 180 kilometer per hour and high-frequency operations of every 5 to 10 minutes, the 82-kilometer corridor connecting Sarai Kale Khan in Delhi to Modipuram in Meerut in Uttar Pradesh is expected to reduce the journey time to about one hour from the present 3 to 4 hours. The RRTS will have multimodal hubs to ensure smooth interchange with other transport modes.