Twenty-one years later, crowds cheer another Metro moment in Ghaziabad

India's first RRTS has NCR in awe, but only time will tell its actual impact

Sandwiched between the green nurseries of the Vasundhara locality and the grey fumes of the industrial area in Ghaziabad, the Sahibabad station of the freshly inaugurated Delhi-Meerut Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS) stands as the sole attraction on a mundane Saturday evening.

For this district adjoining New Delhi, the station’s location best represents its own story — one of an aspirational cluster of urban, upper middle-income gated societies oscillating between the drive to have their own identity and being brushed aside as the “outskirts of the national capital”.

Families, groups of students, rail enthu­sia­sts, and vloggers have flocked to the