Indian Railways' Capital Plan: Making Delhi the Connectivity Hub
- Jayant Chakravarti
- Apr 5
- 9 min read
Updated: Apr 5
The national capital region of Delhi holds enormous geopolitical significance as home to the capital of one of the world's most promising and emerging superpowers. The region not only sits at the centre of a highly-industrialised and populated land mass, but also connects almost every Indian city in each direction, a fact that makes it the de facto transit hub for hundreds of millions of people travelling for work, business or leisure every year.
Possibly the most crucial factor that enables the NCR to maintain its political and economic dominance in a country of 1.4 billion people is the Indian Railways. There is no other central institution that holds so much love, interest and attraction in the hearts of Indians, few of whom have not travelled in trains in their lives.
The importance of the railways to the capital region can only be signified in raw numbers. The New Delhi railway station records an annual footfall of about 40 million people, and other major junctions in NCR, such as Hazrat Nizamuddin, Anand Vihar, Old Delhi, Sarai Rohilla and Ghaziabad host another 70 million people annually. Taken together, all the major railway stations and junctions in NCR together host more than twice the population of the region itself.
These numbers signify why the Indian Railways' style of functioning is difficult to compare with railway systems of advanced economies. Every single day, Indian Railways ferries tens of thousands of people to Delhi's stations, plans train schedules to ferry a similar population out of Delhi to more than 4,000 cities and towns, while also handling the arrivals of millions of tonnes of goods and running dozens of special trains to cater for festivals and occasions that draw gargantuan crowds.
Passenger Woes
The numbers will make one wonder how the railways does what it does, but for the everyday travellers, the sheer scale of operations makes it a daily struggle to reserve tickets, travel from their homes and workplaces to stations, push and shove amidst surging crowds to reach their platforms, protect their valuables, and maintain their daily schedules.
The railways may serve as the default travelling option for millions of people, given the low cost of travel and the distances trains cover. But for an aspirational Indian population, an astronomical rise in air travel over the past decade and the opening of dozens of gleaming highways and expressways around NCR indicate that they have options when it comes to travelling safely and comfortably while avoiding severe rushes at stations.
The Indira Gandhi International airport handled over 70 million domestic passengers in 2025, more than double the 34.3 million passenger traffic it handled in 2015. By late 2026, a massive new airport will become active in Jewar near Noida, providing people with more flight options and choice of airports. The opening of the Delhi-Dehradun expressway, the Delhi-Mumbai expressway, and the Ganga expressway in Uttar Pradesh will also give people the option to travel by car over long distances at train-like speeds.
If a large section of the population has started to wean itself away from total dependence on the Indian Railways for long-distance travel, the railways must cop the blame for the shift.
For many a decade, nothing changed in how the carrier operated. The aging Rajdhanis and the Shatabdis continued to define premium rail travel for five decades, the journey times never reduced, the quality of coaches remained the same, the stations looked the same, the filth, the smelly toilets, the non-functional water dispensers, the hours lost in delays - everything remained the same.
Fast forward to 2014, the country started seeing a restlessness to change things, and the viewpoint wasn't limited to those politically-aligned with the BJP. It began with promises to do away with the legacy ICF coaches as soon as possible, electrifying the entire network, expanding the rail network like never before, digitising ticket bookings and most importantly, changing the speed and quality of response to travellers' needs and demands.
All these planned reforms took a decade to fructify on a grand scale, and The Indian Railways is nothing like what it was a decade ago. Today, the network is 99.6% electrified (up from 33% in 2014) and track length supporting speeds of more than 110 kmph has increased from 31,455 kilometres in 2014 to 84,244 kilometres at present.
The number of polluting diesel engines has come down from 5,600 in 2014 to less than 2,500 with most used for yard operations or shunting services and the number of electric engines has zoomed from 4,823 in 2014 to more than 13,000 at present. The number of modern LHB coaches has also zoomed from a mere 2,300 in 2014 to more than 45,000 at present.
These developments supported a fast-paced modernisation drive to bring the railways up to speed with travellers' growing expectations. The arrival of the Vande Bharat Express trains, with 84 pairs running at almost 100% capacity today, proves that the Railways has the capability to offer world-class services if push comes to shove.
Coming back to the Indian Railways' NCR operations, the decade-old modernisation drive has added dozens of new train services and enhanced passenger amenities, but the top five railway stations continue to remain crowded and at times, poorly managed. The continuing possibility of incoming doom met its reckoning during the Kumbh season in 2015 when a huge stampede at platforms 14 and 15 led to the deaths of 18 people, including 11 women and 5 children.
Redeveloping the Capital Station
The tragedy provided a reality check to the long-stalled plan to modernise the New Delhi railway station and soon after, the government greenlit a ₹2,196 crore project to make the station a world-class multimodal hub by 2029.
The redevelopment project, carried out through a joint venture of HG Infra Engineering and DEC Infrastructure, involves demolishing existing station buildings in both Paharganj and Ajmeri Gate sides, replacing them with new, linear buildings, creating large holding areas for at least 7,000 waiting passengers, building wide access roads to avoid traffic jams, setting up a new ticket booking area, building 150 toilets each for men and women, and installing additional ticket counters, automatic ticket vending machines, and free RO water facilities.
The amenities will improve passenger experiences and ease of movement, and similar redevelopment works are in progress in twelve other stations in the capital region under the government's Amrit Bharat scheme. These stations are Adarsh Nagar, Delhi, Anand Vihar, Bijwasan, Delhi Cantt, Delhi Sarai Rohilla, Delhi Shahdara, Hazrat Nizamuddin, Narela, Sabzi Mandi, Safdarjung and Tilak Bridge.
As I noted earlier, New Delhi railway station serves about 40 million passengers every year, more than the combined number of passengers served by Hazrat Nizamuddin, Anand Vihar and Delhi Sarai Rohilla, each of which are major stations with impressive passenger volumes. Having said that, the scope of present redevelopments in the station will only ease to an extent, but not resolve the growing rush of passenger traffic in the years to come.
The Major Routes
New Delhi and its satellite stations serve eight major routes. These are as follows:
New Delhi - Faridabad - Palwal: This section serves heavy commuter traffic coming in from cities in Haryana such as Faridabad, Ballabgarh, Asaoti and Palwal. Also featuring the Hazrat Nizamuddin station, it is part of the Delhi-Mathura line that connects Delhi with Kota, Vadodara, Surat, Gwalior, Bhopal, Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai and Thiruvanthapuram.
New Delhi – Sonipat – Panipat: This route serves major traffic heading towards Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu.
New Delhi – Rohtak: This route runs through densely-populated sections of NCR and Haryana, connecting New Delhi with Sarai Rohilla, Shakurbasti, Mangolpuri, Nangloi, Mundka, Bahadurgarh, and Rohtak.
New Delhi – Gurgaon – Rewari: This line serves Delhi Cantt, Palam, Bijwasan and Gurgaon and heads further towards Alwar, Jaipur, and then on to Jodhpur. The route also hosts major trains to Ahmedabad such as the Swarna Jayanti Rajdhani Express, Ashram Express and Yoga Express.
Old Delhi – Shahdara – Shamli: This route falls on the Delhi-Saharanpur line, connecting the NCR region with the western UP cities of Noli, Khekra, Bagpat Road, Baraut and Shamli. This single-line route, presently being doubled, primarily hosts MEMU trains.
Delhi – Ghaziabad – Khurja – Aligarh: The premier route of the Indian Railways on the New Delhi-Howrah express line. The line connects New Delhi with Agra Cantt and with major junctions like Kanpur, Prayagraj, Gaya, Asansol and Howrah.
Delhi – Ghaziabad – Hapur – Garhmukteswhwar: This route primarily serves the heavily congested regions of western and eastern UP, including Varanasi, Garhmukteswhwar, Hapur, Bareilly, Lucknow, Amethi and Shahjahanpur. Trains on this line primarily depart from Delhi Shahdara or Old Delhi station.
Delhi – Ghaziabad – Meerut: Situated on the Delhi-Dehradun line, this route covers the industrial belt consisting of Meerut, Ghaziabad, Modinagar and Muradnagar. Crossing Meerut, the route meets with Saharanpur, Roorkee, Haridwar and Dehradun.
Considering the large number of high-traffic routes originating from the NCR region in possibly every direction, the need to decongest New Delhi, Old Delhi, Hazrat Nizamuddin and Anand Vihar stations has become a necessity more than a convenience. Realising the task at hand, the Northern Railway is using the Amrit Bharat scheme as well as additional funds to redevelop smaller stations on a major scale.
Bijwasan Railway Station Redevelopment
The Bijwasan railway station redevelopment is possibly the most ambitious project that will have a major role in reducing traffic volumes in existing major stations. Until recently, Bijwasan used to be a small railway station with just two partially-covered platforms on the Delhi-Jaipur line. It lies close to the IGI Airport, Dwarka, Kapashera, the Dwarka Sector 21 metro station and the Urban Extension Road-2.
The Indian Railways is upgrading the station in two phases, with the first phase set for completion by June 2026. The station will soon feature as many as eight platforms spread over an area of 1.24 lakh square metres, a separate area for washing, maintenance and repair works, a large 12,500 square metre concourse over the platforms with separate entry and exit points, multiple subways connecting the platforms and large parking facilities.
According to railway officials, Bijwasan holds much promise because of its prime location, and Northern Railway plans to make it an airport-style seven-star transit hub, enabling passengers to quickly transit to the IGI airport next door or take the UER-2 or Dwarka expressway to travel to their destinations.
However, a major challenge is the heavily congested Najafgarh-Kapashera Road and the 800-metre long Bijwasan flyover which could make travelling to and from the station difficult, especially with hundreds of trains crossing the station everyday. The Delhi government is now planning to build a new flyover between NH-48 near Mahipalpur and Bijwasan railway overbridge to ease congestion. There are also plans to extend the Bijwasan flyover by up to 1.5 kilometres. Once operational, the railway station will significantly reduce traffic at Old Delhi, Sarai Rohilla and New Delhi railway stations.
Shakur Basti Station Redevelopment
Situated on the suburban railway line in North West Delhi, Shakur Basti railway station serves a vast network of commuter trains and is also the originating point for dozens of long distance trains, such as Punjab Mail, Himsagar Express, Dhauladhar Express, Gorakhdham Express, Kalindi Express, Firozpur Janata Express and Swarn Nagari Express.
The station recently underwent major upgrades, including the construction of a new station building, three 610-metre platforms and a dedicated new loco line to enhance its passenger bearing capacity, and is undergoing additional redevelopment such as the construction of a new Trainset Depot as a world-class maintenance facility.
With the New Delhi railway station redevelopment work underway, North Railway has begun shifting a number of trains away from the premier station to major satellite stations, including Shakur Basti. The construction of new passenger circulation areas and the ongoing 7.24 km Delhi Kishanganj–Shakurbasti third line project will further enhance the station's reputation as one of NCR's premier railway hubs.
The Arrival of Regional Rapid Transit System
With the Indian Railways having little room to construct new lines or major stations in and around the national capital region, the government of India decided to set up an entirely new transportation system, named the Regional Rapid Transit System and managed by National Capital Region Transport Corporation, to provide high-speed and world-class rail services connecting the NCR with major cities and towns in its vicinity.
The Delhi–Meerut Regional Rapid Transit System is now operational, enabling lakhs of commuters to travel between Meerut South and New Ashok Nagar in just an hour. Between February 2024 and February 2026, RRTS' ridership zoomed from 92,000 passengers per day to an impressive 1.7 million passengers per day.
The RRTS project, thanks to its speed of operations and excellent connectivity with major railway and metro stations, has absorbed much of the traffic moving between Delhi and Meerut. Buoyed by its success, NCRTC is working towards extending the line beyond Meerut to Haridwar, estimating that the journey would take just two hours compared to 5-6 hours by rail.
The high speed rail corporation has also begun work on its second major RRTS route - a 136-kilometre Delhi-Panipat-Karnal corridor that will connect the Sarai Kale Khan RRTS station in Delhi with New ISBT Karnal in Haryana. The route will pas through major cities like Sonipat, Ganaur, Samalkha, Panipat and Karnal.
Work on the high speed corridor between Delhi and Karnal began shortly after the Haryana government approved the 33,000 crore project, contributing 7,472 crore from its purse. With Sarai Kale Khan as its hub, NCRTC plans to eventually run multiple RRTS services, including a Delhi-Gurugram-Alwar corridor, a Delhi-Bahadurgarh-Rohtak corridor, a Ghaziabad-Jewar Airport corridor, and a 60 kilometre Delhi–Faridabad–Ballabgarh–Palwal Corridor.
Looking Ahead
The Indian Railways, to its credit, has done wonders over the past decade in terms of upgrading its rolling stock, introducing world-class high-speed trainsets, electrifying its network, modernising steel tracks, and upgrading major stations. But in a region that serves hundreds of millions of people, it cannot hope to be the sole transporter for too long without compromising service quality or operational efficiency.
Expansion of the RRTS service, an ever-expanding Delhi metro network, rising air connectivity between major towns and cities, and the commissioning of multiple expressways and highways will eventually put into motion an efficient multi-modal transportation network that will offer commuters more choices and the ability to travel quickly and safely between cities and major destinations.
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