Proposal to spend 55,000 billion VND to immediately expand 5 expressways

The Ministry of Transport proposed that the Government upgrade the expressways with investment phases, including urgently expanding 5 sections with a capital of more than 55,000 billion VND.

On April 9, the Ministry of Transport proposed a plan to divide the expressway into groups according to the level of priority for upgrading.

Group 1 includes 5 expressways that need to be upgraded and expanded immediately, including the 66 km long La Son - Hoa Lien section (Thua Thien Hue, Da Nang), currently operating with 2 lanes. The plan to upgrade this route to a complete 4-lane route requires about 3,011 billion VND, and the competent authority has allocated capital from the increased central budget revenue in 2022. The project will start construction in 2024 and be basically completed in 2025.

The 98 km Cam Lo - La Son section (Quang Tri, Thua Thien Hue) is currently operating with 2 lanes and needs about 7,000 billion VND to expand to 4 lanes. The Ministry of Transport has proposed allocating capital from the increased central budget revenue in 2023 for early implementation.

The Cao Bo - Mai Son section is 15 km long, with a limited 4-lane scale. The Ministry of Transport has approved the investment policy for a 6-lane scale with a cost of 1,995 billion VND, of which 1,200 billion VND has been allocated from the central budget revenue increase in 2022, the rest will be allocated in the period 2026-2030. The project is appraising the feasibility study report, expected to start construction this year, completed in 2026.

The 2-lane Cam Lo - La Son Expressway is classified as group 1 and urgently needs to be expanded. Photo: Vo Thanh — The 2-lane Cam Lo - La Son Expressway is classified as group 1 and urgently needs to be expanded. Photo: *Vo Thanh*

The Trung Luong - My Thuan section is 51 km long, currently operating with 4 limited lanes. The Ministry of Transport is coordinating with investors to complete a pre-feasibility study report to upgrade to 6 lanes, combined with expanding the Ho Chi Minh City - Trung Luong section to 8 lanes. The total investment is about 35,362 billion VND, of which the Ho Chi Minh City - Trung Luong section is 22,224 billion VND, the Trung Luong - My Thuan section is 13,138 billion VND, with the capital expected to be mobilized by investors.

The 26 km Hoa Lac - Hoa Binh section is currently operating with 2 lanes. Hoa Binh province has basically completed the pre-feasibility report for the project to expand to 6 lanes, with a total investment of about 7,950 billion VND. The province has balanced the state capital participation of more than 3,000 billion VND, the rest is mobilized by investors.

The total investment for upgrading 5 projects in group 1 is expected to be 55,318 billion VND, of which state capital is 15,034 billion VND and investor mobilized capital is 40,284 billion VND.

Of the 5 projects proposed for expansion, 3 have 2-lane routes. Recently, on the Cam Lo - La Son and La Son - Hoa Lien expressways, a number of traffic accidents have occurred, causing people to worry about safety issues. These projects still have some shortcomings such as the lack of intelligent traffic systems, rest stops, and emergency lanes, so they need to be invested in and expanded to complete synchronously.

Two limited 4-lane projects that need to be expanded immediately are Cao Bo - Mai Son and Trung Luong - My Thuan, because these are vital traffic routes with rapidly increasing transportation demand.

The Ministry of Transport also proposed group 2 - expressway projects that need to be expanded. with a total capital of about 18,683 billion VND. These are the Yen Bai - Lao Cai sections of 83 km, Thai Nguyen - Cho Moi section of 40 km, and the 12 km section through Hai Phong and Thai Binh province on the Ninh Binh - Hai Phong expressway.

Group 3 includes projects: Tuyen Quang - Ha Giang 104 km, Hoa Binh - Moc Chau 66 km, Dong Dang - Tra Linh 93 km, the section connecting Tan Thanh border gate and Coc Nam border gate 17 km, Chon Thanh - Duc Hoa 84 km; capital demand is about 50,837 billion VND.

Group 4 includes the remaining limited 4-lane divergent expressways, requiring about VND 410,572 billion.

According to the Ministry of Transport, the expressways with 4 lanes are still being operated effectively and meeting the transportation demand. However, some sections in Group 1 are in urgent need of priority investment and upgrading. The remaining routes need to focus on completing auxiliary works such as rest stops, vehicle weight inspection stations and intelligent traffic systems.

The country currently has 1,892 km of expressways, 1,802 km of which are under construction and 805 km of which are being prepared for investment. However, due to limited state resources, to meet the immediate transportation needs, some expressways have had to be divided into investment phases according to the scale of 2 lanes or 4 limited lanes (intermittent emergency lanes).

Doan Loan

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