Govt approves construction of NCR Transport Corporation

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To carry out construction of three Regional Rapid Transit System corridors connecting Delhi with Panipat, Alwar and Meerut, the Union Cabinet on Thursday approved constitution of National Capital Region Transport Corporation Limited (NCRTC).

The NCRTC would be formed under the Companies Act, 1956 with initial seed capital of Rs.100 crore for designing, developing, implementing, financing, operating and maintaining Regional Rapid Transit system (RRTS) in national capital region (NCR), an official statement released here said.

The corridors are being developed to provide comfortable and fast transit to NCR towns and meet the high growth in transport demand, the statement said.

As per the proposal approved by the cabinet, the NCRTC may form subsidiary companies for implementing each corridor.

The centre and the state governments would contribute equally to the initial seed capital of Rs 100. While the urban development and railway ministries would contribute 22.5 per cent of the amount, the national capital region planning board would contribute five per cent.

The rest of the amount would be contributed by the state governments of Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan and UP who would all pool in 12.5 per cent each.

Officials said that while eight RRTS corridors have been identified earlier for development in the NCR area, the NCRTC will take up three prioritised corridors.

The first corridor Delhi - Sonipat - Panipat is 111 km long and the daily ridership is estimated to be 3.77 lakh in 2016 which may grow to 9.83 lakh by 2041.

The second corridor Delhi - Gurgaon - Alwar is 180 km long and estimated to carry 6.9 lakh people daily in 2016 which will go up to 15.1 lakh by 2041.

The third corridor Delhi - Ghaziabad - Meerut is 90 km long and would carry an estimated 5.7 lakh people everyday in 2016 and 11.4 by 2041. The total length of the three corridors to be developed by NCRTC is 381 km.

The NCRTC is to be set up within a period of two months.

While NCRTC is being set up with an initial capital of Rs 100 crore, the actual cost, financing plan, RRTS alignments, real estate development, financing through transit oriented development, etc will be firmed up and frozen in the detailed project reports (DPR) of these projects while processing proposals for each corridor for sanction subsequently.

The DPRs are under finalisation, it further said.

Earlier the NCRPB had prepared a ‘Functional Plan on Transport for NCR-2032’, which recommended eight RRTS corridors to connect important towns of the NCR with a high speed rail based commuter transit system.

A task force set up by the Planning Commission for the RRTS for the NCR in its meeting held in December, 2009 proposed the construction of a special purpose vehicle (SPV) called NCRTC, for the implementation of a comprehensive integrated multi-modal sub­urban commuter transportation system for the NCR, to start with a corpus of Rs.100 crore.

A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed in June, 2011 by the government of India, the NCRPB and the state governments of UP, Haryana, Rajasthan and Delhi for the formation of the NCRTC.