The Draft Regional Plan-2041, prepared by the NCR Planning Board, has set an ambitious target: every major city in the NCR should be reachable from Delhi within 30 minutes.
According to the agenda circulated among participating states, the NCRPB board meeting scheduled for June 16 is expected to formally advance the plan, bringing its mobility proposals closer to implementation than they have been in years.
The plan states, “It is necessary to minimise journey time across NCR areas — Delhi should have 30-minute connectivity through superfast trains with major cities of NCR.” It also proposes examining the feasibility of a 30-minute mass transit rail system from the nearest NCR boundaries to Delhi, covering not only major cities but also the outer edges of the region.
The primary instrument for this vision is the Regional Rapid Transit System, now branded Namo Bharat. Eight RRTS corridors were originally identified by the NCRPB, covering all four directions from Delhi.
For Haryana, the Delhi-Gurugram-Alwar corridor is among the most significant, linking Gurugram — already the NCR’s financial powerhouse and a Metro Centre under the plan’s urban hierarchy — to Delhi with sharply reduced travel time. The Delhi-Faridabad-Ballabgarh-Palwal corridor would similarly benefit Faridabad, the state’s largest industrial city.
On the eastern side, the Delhi-Meerut corridor, already partially operational, serves Ghaziabad, a key gateway to western Uttar Pradesh. The Delhi-Noida-Greater Noida axis, already connected by Metro, would be further strengthened through integrated multimodal planning under the same framework.
The plan proposes not just rail corridors but a wider transport ecosystem around them. Integrated multimodal transport hubs, where RRTS, Metro, bus and last-mile services converge, have been proposed across the region. Transit-oriented development zones around these hubs would concentrate housing, offices and retail near stations, reducing trip lengths.
An elevated or at-grade outer ring road, parallel to Delhi’s existing Ring Road, has also been proposed to handle vehicle overflow.
One practical reform in the plan stands out. It proposes that NCR states should not shut interstate borders except in genuine emergencies. The proposal appears to be a direct response to the Covid-era border closures, which stranded thousands of daily commuters and exposed the fragility of the region’s mobility system.
