Delhi's S-Bahn Network, or well the «RER» but you know what I mean!
I wanted to write this on one of my best friend's birthday actually, but January has been cruel and I was really tired, why I bring her up is because by happenstance last year on her birthday when we went out to celebrate her "Shok" (a word more akin to the spiritual passing than of birth ;])
Who could visit my part of the National Capital Territory other than my beloved Prime Minister Narendra Modi, inaugurating the "Rapid X" or the "Regional Rapid Transit System" or the Meerut Metro (not to be confused with the Metro system within Meerut which is part of this project), a system to connect Delhi with its peripheries which currently rely upon the Indian Railways and it's underloved local EMU/DMU services for travelling into the centre of the Indian political capital, and the WIDER NATIONAL CAPITAL REGION!!!!!! [Note 1]
Line 1 which was commissioned by the NCRTC, one of the newer Transportation Corporation to touch Delhi's lands, expanded out to the National Capital Region Transportation Corporation, hoped to connect the wider region to Delhi.
This service began construction around October 2023, and as all big "not really necessary at the moment" projects go, [see the theory of survival of the unfittest] it was taken as a political project first, becoming flagged as THE project to secure legacy or some shit idk.
Like the Delhi Metro it was first just branded by its technical name, MRTS for the Delhi Metro and RRTS for the ... well RRTS, unlike the Delhi Metro which within the first few years of hosting a website [Note 2] had built a brand name for itself and an aesthetic, the RRTS has in my opinion failed to do that even now with service being operational for more than a year!
I am not the first to point out its comparability of the S-Bahn or the RER, I think the MetroRailGuy did it first, but I will say, the system design is certainly more an RER than an S-Bahn, or even a Tokyo Metro, which I think is what it is trying to be, more on that later.
After renaming the service and the Alstom designed and built trainset to "NA MO Bharat" [space added by author's intention], the running of the service was bid out to Deutsche Bahn, so funnily, its a German Run, French akin, Paris like, system to expand Delhi to be larger than Tokyo and London.
Why do I call it an RER? The RER at least what I got to experience of it, and have learnt about it, is predominantly, at least to me, a system that essentially thinks of the subway, and says, hey, why can't the train go faster.
The RER or the Express Regional philosophy is to take the subway and it's right of way and expand that to be further spread out, as to act as a more express way to the exterior suburbs of the city, Unlike the S-Bahn style, which converges these lines into a high availability corridor in the city, the RER expands out from places like major train stations, like Gare de Nord/Est, allowing the city to flow from a natural centre to its outskirts.
For Delhi, this centre is amusingly not the New Delhi Railway Station, instead the Hazrat Nizamuddin Railway Station, the NDLS (N ew D elhi Rai L way S tation? IR give me one reason, PLEASE) or Sarai Kale Khan? I am too much of an outsider from that part of the city to know what to call it or call one saffron washing, but the railway station is NZM, and I am an Indian Railways child, all my trains dropped me off at "Hazrat Nizamuddin".
From there the lines will swoop away from the city, connecting several points in the Delhi Metro before escaping away from to the Delhi Suburbs like Ghaziabad, Gurgaon, or Faridabad along with the smaller neighbouring cities.
Being able to reach further and stop less, these trains are also the first revenue service which will / are going to go above the Indian Railway's Kryptonite of 130 km/h; These trains are going to use ETCS 2 for in cab signalling and for a higher speed of apparently 160 Km/h in revenue service while being "capable of 200 km/h" if true this certainly punches the NHSRC in the gut which started earlier and still is yet to even start on its test phase.
I finally a few days before January 7th 2026, the anniversary of NArendera MOdi inaugurating the New Ashok Nagar to Anand Vihar (I believe) Section of the line, I rode that same section as I had gone to meet some friends in the region, and surprisingly, the fare at my time of journey because of the recent Metro fare hike was cheaper via the RRTS! The ticket cost me 30 INR, vs. The 32 INR it would have cost me on the Delhi Metro (~ >0.3 EUR) it also only cost me being sexually harassed by the security at the New Ashok Nagar RRTS Station! That was fun [apologies to drop that here but it did happen and I'd rather it included in my account of my first time riding the service]
It was a short trip that maxxed out at a 130Km/h and took me to Anand Vihar ISBT, where I was for the first time and enjoyed the bus terminus a bunch, if only we had used any part of this NA money MO hole to fund proper bus terminus in Delhi like Bangalore has, and we could have functional intra city transit!
So yes! Since the anniversary and multiple delays [1] of the opening of the actually useful, New Ashok Nagar <-> Hazrat Nizamuddin Section of the line, the line is in competition with the Noida Metro for its ridership numbers and is more expensive, recently exploring the limits on delhimetrorail.com/map and the rrts.co.in website, going just two more stops to a stop directly accessible via the metro, would result in a flip with the metro being cheaper than the RRTS, the slow service being cheaper than the express? Reminds me of the DTC's fare structure and I wonder if the DTC is still carrying more passengers daily than the DMRC ;D
The station in between Anand Vihar and Ghaziabad, the third station, Sahibabad is somewhat aligned with the Indian Railways' station of the same name, and the Indian Railways local services, while being much less available, also reflect the price being only a 10 INR ride.
So why start this service?
I won't dig too deep in here, I still want to writer another article maybe it is also now 01:54 as I write this so maybe some other day? But yes, I really believe one of the main purpose of the Delhi Metro was to connect not just the city centre with cheaper labour sources within the city, but allow for redevelopment of those parts of the city in an area more akin to Noida, and later even more so connecting the "Heart" of Delhi with it's ""Satellite"" cities, what other places would call it's Suburbs, like Noida, Gurgaon, and Faridabad, which is why Nangoli had a Metro service before much of South Delhi, also why the Blue, Red, and Yellow Lines, aka Line 3, 1, 2, respectively expanded to these exterior cities or at least their peripheries before they connected to areas within Delhi itself. I would recommend downloading CoMaps, an android app built on OSM, and enabling the Metro layer, while trying to it the entire Delhi Metro System (not even the GMRCL, and NMRC) onto the Map while trying to fit in the NCT's borders, and then looking at the holes in the maps.
Now connecting Meerut, and more importantly all the smaller towns on way to Delhi, it is going to open up much more commercial ability within Delhi, while allowing people to commute in from the far flung areas of the NATIONAL CAPITAL REGION, a plan to expand Delhi past its historical, and imperial set boundaries.
As an anecdote, recently having to take the Metro, I discovered at New Ashok Nagar Metro Station (which connects to the RRTS Station), they had recently opened a Visa application centre for the UAE or one of the Gulf countries, an area where a lot of Indians find themselves quite literally lured to, being compensated for back breaking labour with violation of their human rights, essential enslavement, all to feed their families back home.
Delhi is the shining city on the hill, the train takes you there, and in Delhi you sell yourself away constructing the train, constructing the Football stadiums, and the slums that you are now forced to live in, where rent in now double what it was 3 months ago, before the train started operation.
Gentrification! Fun!
Living close to the metro station, I find myself often having to go there, at least once or twice a month, with that comes seeing how that neighbourhood is evolving, what was once dense, unplanned urbanism that was home to people who could only afford to call the place their home, now with the development of being visited by the NA MO himself, there are new higher rise buildings, there are now parks being developed in an area that would previously house at least 200, developing at the margins pushes out the exact margins which could only live there.
[Note 1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Capital_Region_(India) I would implore you to look at a map of this "region" it tries to not just consume half or more of at least one of the neighbouring state, but also severely transform what "Delhi" even his, by non mystical and only scientific god! They might even come up with a stupid backronym for Delhi, Double Energetic Land of High Intensity anyone?
[Note 2] I would actually implore everyone to also visit the early versions of the Delhi Metro website from the 2000s to 2015 before the embraced corporatism and just giving up on having a cool flash and then space minimalism inspired website, the wayback machine has archives from a lot of the time period, its all so cool, if you are too lazy for that one, try https://museum.delhimetrorail.com/ too, they haven't updated it in forever, old twitter logo and website design and all! I found it since they moved the metro museum to Supreme Court, I plan to go soon, I actually nearly visited on Saturday, but I had somewhere else to be that day. its all very fun!
[1] https://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/delhi/2025/Oct/09/delhis-sarai-kale-khan-rrts-station-awaits-inauguration-as-deadlines-slip I can't find older articles for the feburary deadline, but yes this one says June, which I believe was the deadline after Feburary fell through, and since october, they haven't actually updated shit, its now just limbo, the last news from the RRTS was "hey we completed the pedestrian bridge from our station to the railway station" which means fuck all really because nobody is climbing on for a non functioning station? and yes, no, they haven't connected to the ISBT, or the street bus stop, so, fuck you?
[unrelated] also I just looked at the metrorailguy's blog for the RRTS and for some reason I had assumed the Jewar airport line connected directly back to NZM for whatever reason? well its all still up in the air, but the metrorailgenderedperson is pretty accurate and yeah, maybe I am wrong, they would maybe branch the palwal corridor off of alwar line??? who knows if they even build another line tbf.
Also also- I realised I forgot to mention another part of this that I wanted to talk about, they could have certainly spent all this money on the Northern Railways and the Indian Railways as a whole and would have gotten a better system IMO, I am all for turning the Delhi Ring Railway into something like the London Overground, and using the existing Northern Railways Infrastructure for improving trackage for higher speed rail would have benefited the wider railways infrastructure but but, thats a whole seperate can of worms i'd like to argue with people while not being that knowledgable at it, and them not choosing to do this to me really strikes me as why this is intentionally a gentrifying and neoliberal project first and public transit second.