PIB TrackerNamo Bharat at three: 4.5 crore journeys, 1.68 lakh in a single day
The 82-km Delhi-Ghaziabad-Meerut corridor now carries over 1.1 lakh commuters a day, with two more corridors awaiting approval and two at detailed project report stage.
What happened
- NCRTC marked Namo Bharat Diwas 2026 on 17 October, three years of operations, with the Union Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs and Power present.
- Since inauguration on 20 October 2023, the 82-km Delhi-Ghaziabad-Meerut corridor has recorded over 4.5 crore passenger journeys.
- Operations began with the 17-km Sahibabad-Duhai priority section in October 2023; the full 82 km was dedicated on 22 February 2026 along with Meerut Metro.
- Current ridership: over 1.1 lakh commuters daily, with a single-day record of about 1.68 lakh.
- Sustainability: Solar on Track and a 110 MW captive solar power plant. Pipeline: Delhi-Panipat-Karnal and Delhi-Gurugram-Behror awaiting approval; Ghaziabad-Jewar and Noida-Faridabad-Gurgaon at DPR stage.
For Prelims
- What Namo Bharat is: India’s first Regional Rapid Transit System, a category between a metro and intercity rail - higher speed and wider station spacing than a metro, with design speed of 180 kmph and operating speed around 160 kmph.
- NCRTC: the National Capital Region Transport Corporation, a joint venture of the Government of India with Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan, set up to implement RRTS corridors under the NCR Planning Board’s regional plan.
- The three priority corridors: Delhi-Meerut, Delhi-Alwar (now Delhi-Gurugram-Behror) and Delhi-Panipat (now Delhi-Panipat-Karnal) were identified first; the others named here are later additions.
- Why phased opening matters: revenue begins on the first operational section, which is why corridors open in parts - but ridership only reaches design levels when both ends of the corridor are connected, as this system’s numbers show.
- Captive solar and traction cost: electricity is the single largest operating expense of a rail system, so a 110 MW captive plant hedges tariff risk for decades - the same logic behind Indian Railways’ solar and round-the-clock renewable procurement.
- Multimodal integration: an RRTS station’s catchment depends on feeder buses, metro interchange, parking and last-mile services; ridership failures in Indian transit are usually last-mile failures rather than corridor failures.
- Funding model: RRTS corridors are financed largely through multilateral loans - the Asian Development Bank, the New Development Bank and others - with equity from the Centre and the States, which is why new corridors need formal approval before construction.
- Operating ratio: the ratio of operating expenditure to revenue is the standard measure of a transit system’s viability; no Indian metro covers its full costs from the farebox, and this release gives no such figure for Namo Bharat.
For UPSC: The only operating RRTS in the country, now with three years of ridership data - the concrete example for any answer on urban and regional mobility. Deploy it on urban transport and regional planning, on infrastructure financing and multilateral lending, on multimodal integration, and on renewable procurement by transport utilities.
What it is NOT: No fare revenue, no operating ratio, no cost of the corridor and no debt service figure, so the financial performance of the only RRTS in the country is unstated three years in. No breakdown of the 4.5 crore journeys by year or by station, which would show where ridership is actually coming from. No comparison with the project’s own ridership projections - the figure every DPR contains - and no date for the pending approvals. Nothing on travel time saved, mode shift from road, or the Meerut Metro’s separate ridership.
For Mains
Syllabus: GS3.9 · GS3.1 · Linkage L1
Anchor
Three years after its first section opened, the 82-km Delhi-Ghaziabad-Meerut Namo Bharat corridor has carried over 4.5 crore passenger journeys, now serves more than 1.1 lakh commuters a day and has touched 1.68 lakh in a single day.
Substantiation (data)
Operations began in October 2023 with the 17-km Sahibabad-Duhai priority section; the full corridor was dedicated on 22 February 2026 along with Meerut Metro. The system runs Solar on Track and is building a 110 MW captive solar plant. Delhi-Panipat-Karnal and Delhi-Gurugram-Behror are stated to be close to approval, with Ghaziabad-Jewar and Noida-Faridabad-Gurgaon at detailed project report stage.
Position
The ridership arithmetic is the finding. An average of about 41,000 journeys a day across three years against more than 1.1 lakh today means the corridor only began working as a corridor when both ends were connected in February 2026 - which is the strongest available argument against phased openings being treated as achievements. A regional rapid transit line is a network product: it carries almost nobody until it reaches the city at both ends.
Counterpoint
Three years in, the financial case is still unpublished. No fare revenue, no operating ratio, no project cost and no debt service appear in the release, and the next four corridors are either awaiting approval or at report stage - which means the decision to replicate is being taken without the public seeing whether the first one covers its costs. A 110 MW captive solar plant is a sound hedge, but it is an answer about expenditure, not revenue.
Way forward
Publish annual ridership, farebox revenue and operating ratio for the corridor, and the achieved ridership against the DPR projection. For the pending corridors, the useful disclosure is the funding structure and the assumed ridership - the two numbers that determine whether the Delhi-Meerut result is repeatable.
Conclusion
A system that took 28 months to open fully and has done most of its work in the eight months since - and whose balance sheet, three years on, remains unreported.
Deploys into: Urban and regional mobility · Infrastructure financing and multilateral loans · Multimodal integration · Renewable procurement by utilities
Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs · 2026-10-18 · PRID 2324914 · PIB source ↗