{"id":1090093,"date":"2026-08-12T14:19:26","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T08:49:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.squareyards.com\/blog\/?p=1090093"},"modified":"2026-08-12T14:19:26","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T08:49:26","slug":"namo-bharat-rrts-corridor-tod-zones-notified-in-ghaziabad-and-meerut-four-new-corridors-await-clearance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.squareyards.com\/blog\/namo-bharat-rrts-corridor-tod-zones-notified-in-ghaziabad-and-meerut-four-new-corridors-await-clearance","title":{"rendered":"Namo Bharat RRTS corridor: TOD zones notified in Ghaziabad and Meerut, four new corridors await clearance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Transit oriented development zones along India’s first Namo Bharat RRTS corridor have been delineated and notified in the master plans of Ghaziabad and Meerut, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs told the Lok Sabha on August 6. Special areas for TOD have been marked out alongside them.<\/span><\/p>\n

The disclosure came in a written reply by Tokhan Sahu, Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs. The same reply confirmed that detailed project reports for four more corridors, among them a line running from Ghaziabad to Noida International Airport, are still under examination by the central government. The reply was circulated by the Press Information Bureau the same evening.<\/span><\/p>\n

The 82.15 km Delhi-Ghaziabad-Meerut corridor has been fully operational since February. It carries a 23 km Meerut metro network on the same infrastructure, an arrangement that lets one set of viaducts and stations serve both regional commuters and local city travel. National Capital Region Transport Corporation Ltd, or NCRTC, runs the line.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ridership has been substantial. More than 3.8 crore commuters have used the service since operations began, with punctuality holding above 99 percent, according to figures the agency supplied to the ministry. The corridor now connects to three metro lines, two railway stations and four bus terminals. It is an integration built to the guidelines laid down by the Unified Traffic and Transportation Infrastructure Centre under the Delhi Development Authority. NCRTC has also installed 7.8 MWp of rooftop solar capacity across the network.<\/span><\/p>\n

Those numbers describe a working transit line. The land use decision announced alongside them is what carries longer consequences for the towns the corridor passes through.<\/span><\/p>\n

What the TOD notification changes<\/b><\/h2>\n

Transit oriented development concentrates housing, offices and retail within walking distance of a mass transit station, on the logic that density belongs where the trains are. The approach is not new to Indian planning documents. What matters is the step taken here, which is notification in a master plan.<\/span><\/p>\n

A master plan notification converts a planning intention into an enforceable rule about land. It fixes where higher density is permitted and on what terms. Developers work backward from exactly this. Until a zone is notified, the ground around a station is governed by whatever zoning predated the line, which in the case of <\/span>Ghaziabad<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>Meerut<\/span><\/a> was largely written before the corridor existed.<\/span><\/p>\n

For buyers, the practical effect is that station catchments in both cities have now been formally identified as areas meant to grow denser and more mixed in use. The same policy logic has been applied at the Delhi end of the corridor, though it arrived by a different route.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jangpura and Sarai Kale Khan<\/b><\/h2>\n

Under the Delhi TOD Policy of 2021, NCRTC prepared influence zone plans for the TOD nodes at Jangpura and Sarai Kale Khan. An influence zone plan works out land use, densities and access for the area immediately surrounding a station.<\/span><\/p>\n

The 2026 version of the policy goes further. Any new RRTS corridor in Delhi will now automatically be considered under TOD. This removes a negotiation that previously had to be repeated corridor by corridor. Future alignments in the capital will carry TOD treatment from the moment they are approved. That provision reads differently once the pipeline is laid out.<\/span><\/p>\n

Four new corridors await central clearance<\/b><\/h2>\n

Three corridors were prioritized in Phase I of the program. Delhi-Ghaziabad-Meerut is the one now running. The other two, Delhi-<\/span>Gurugram<\/span>-Alwar and Delhi-<\/span>Panipat<\/span>, would extend rapid regional service into south and north Haryana respectively, putting <\/span>Rewari<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>Sonipat<\/span><\/a> within reach of a fifteen minute headway service into the capital.<\/span><\/p>\n

NCRTC has since submitted detailed project reports for four more. They cover Delhi to Karnal, Delhi to Bawal, Bawal to Behror, and Ghaziabad to Noida International Airport, the last of which would give <\/span>Noida<\/span><\/a> and the <\/span>Yamuna Expressway<\/span><\/a> belt a direct regional link to the airport at Jewar.<\/span><\/p>\n

None of these is approved. The ministry’s reply is blunt about why. Namo Bharat RRTS corridor projects are cost intensive, undergo intensive examination at several levels within the central government. It also receives financial assistance only after that examination. It is subject to the feasibility of the proposal and the availability of resources. A submitted DPR is an early milestone. It is not a construction timeline, and buyers positioning themselves along these routes should read it as such.<\/span><\/p>\n

Network expansion is one half of the equation. What it costs to actually ride the thing is the other.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fare Discounts and the commuting radius<\/b><\/h2>\n

NCRTC is currently offering a 35% discount on base fares to every commuter on the network. It has also introduced loyalty points, earned by traveling on the Namo Bharat RRTS corridor and redeemable against further discounts.<\/span><\/p>\n

Commute cost sets a practical limit on how far a working household will move from the city it works in. A discounted fare on a line that arrives on schedule more than 99 times out of 100 makes the daily run from <\/span>Meerut<\/span> or <\/span>Ghaziabad<\/span> into Delhi a defensible choice rather than an endurance test. That is what widens a buyer’s search radius, and it does so faster than any master plan can.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the moment, the notified TOD zones are the only firm development trigger on the ground. The rest of the map is still sitting in a file somewhere in the central government, waiting on a funding decision.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Transit oriented development zones along India’s first Namo Bharat RRTS corridor have been delineated and notified in the master plans of Ghaziabad and Meerut, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs told the Lok Sabha on August 6. Special areas for TOD have been marked out alongside them. The disclosure came in a written reply […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":115,"featured_media":1090094,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29381,221],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.squareyards.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090093"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.squareyards.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.squareyards.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.squareyards.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/115"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.squareyards.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1090093"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.squareyards.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1090096,"href":"https:\/\/www.squareyards.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090093\/revisions\/1090096"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.squareyards.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1090094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.squareyards.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1090093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.squareyards.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1090093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}