RRTS project: Viaduct for 17-km priority section in Gzb completed

Ghaziabad: The National Capital Region Transport Corporation (NCRTC), the agency developing the Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS) project, completed the construction of a 17-kilometre-long elevated viaduct of the priority section in Ghaziabad on Friday. Sources said it will pave the way for the high-speed rail project’s trail run in November.

The 82-km RRTS project is proposed to link the three cities of Delhi, Ghaziabad and Meerut through high-speed trains, having a design speed of 180 kilometres per hour (kmph) with 160kmph of operational speed and an average of 100kmph running speed. The RRTS project will have 25 stations of which 22 are in the jurisdiction of the state of Uttar Pradesh and three in Delhi.

The entire project is scheduled to get commissioned in March 2025.

“The viaduct work for the 17-km priority section is complete. It is based on about 650 pillars and joined by about 650 segments, which have already been placed. The RRTS trains will run on these segments. The precast segments are of different sizes and have been specifically designed to stabilise the high-speed trains, which have a design speed of 180kmph. The work for installation of equipment, signalling and overhead equipment, etc., is progressing fast,” said Puneet Vats, chief public relations officer, NCRTC.

Officials said that the work for the viaduct started on June 3, 2019, while the construction of pillars got completed in August 2021.

The train-sets are getting manufactured at the Savli plant in Gujarat and two of these have already arrived at the Duhai depot in Ghaziabad.

The NCRTC has proposed 30 trains of six coaches each, besides 10 trains with three coaches each that will serve as a local transit module in Meerut.

The RRTS project is pegged at 30,274 crore.

The priority section has five stations at Sahibabad, Ghaziabad city, Duhai, Guldhar and Duhai depot.

“The completion of the viaduct will pave the way for the trial run of the RRTS trains. The trial run is likely in November. Of the five stations of the priority project, the civil construction work is almost complete for three stations at Sahibabad, Guldhar and Duhai depot. The construction of the 17-km viaduct was challenging as it encountered different structures on the way,” Vats added.

The pillars of the 17-km priority section (a fully elevated section) have a height ranging from just eight metres to 22.5 metres.

Officials said after emerging from the underground section near Kaushambi, trains will be at grade with the Vaishali Metro station at a height of about 10 metres.

It will then encounter its first major structure — the flyover crossing near Vasundhara, where the pillars and alignment have been raised to a height of 16 metres against the standard height of 10 metres.

The tracks will run parallel to the Delhi-Howrah railway section where rapid trains will zoom past below the city’s Hindon elevated road at a pillar height of about eight metres before crossing the railway tracks and river Hindon.

Official sources said that towards the Ghaziabad city station, the trains will move on tracks raised to a height of about 22.5 metres that will take it above the Metro line. Here, the NCRTC is coming up with a major interchange station which will connect passengers to the Delhi Metro.

From there, trains will further move over the median of the Delhi-Meerut Road on pillars built at a standard height, which will be raised to about 12.5 metres to avoid the split-shaped Raj Nagar Extension flyover.

Finally, the height will further be raised to 15 metres which will allow the rapid trains to move above the Eastern Peripheral Expressway and proceed towards Modinagar and Meerut.

Officials said that the viaduct of the priority section also include four special steel spans including a 73-metre-long special span installed on the main railway line at Vasundhara; 150-metre-long steel span near Ghaziabad city station and two 45-metre-long steel spans have been installed for the RRTS viaduct towards the Duhai depot.