After decentralization, which routes will the Department of Roads manage?

After decentralization to localities, the Vietnam Road Administration will only manage expressways and key national highways.

This is new content stipulated in Decree 165/2024 guiding a number of articles of the Road Law and Article 77 of the Law on Road Traffic Order and Safety, recently issued by the Government.

Accordingly, the decree stipulates: Decentralization of management of national highways in provinces and centrally run cities to the People's Committees of provinces; works and items of road infrastructure associated with national highways are decentralized; for bridge, tunnel and ferry projects located in two provinces and centrally run cities, the Ministry of Transport shall consult with the People's Committees of relevant provinces before deciding that a provincial People's Committee shall be decentralized to manage these projects.

Ho Chi Minh Road through Dak Lak province.

Unclassified national highways, including: Expressways managed by the Ministry of Transport; National Highway 1, Ho Chi Minh Road to connect national highways and other roads along the length of the country; national highways with special requirements for ensuring national defense and security; national highway routes and sections that the State has assigned to state-owned enterprises for investment in construction, management, operation, exploitation, and maintenance; other cases decided by the Prime Minister.

Capital sources for investment, construction, management, operation, exploitation and maintenance of national highway infrastructure when decentralized to the Provincial People's Committees shall be implemented in accordance with the provisions of the law on state budget, investment, public investment, investment under the public-private partnership method, management and use of public assets and other relevant provisions of law.

After being decentralized, the Government assigns the provincial People's Committees to be responsible for investing in and constructing national highways according to the approved road network planning and road infrastructure planning; managing, operating, exploiting, maintaining, and protecting the road infrastructure of the decentralized national highways.

At the same time, it is responsible for managing, using and exploiting the road infrastructure assets of the decentralized national highway; ensuring synchronous traffic connection in terms of load and means of traffic on the decentralized national highway section with the roads in the road network planning, road infrastructure planning and ensuring convenient traffic connection with other routes in the area.

The Government also assigned the Ministry of Transport to be responsible for inspecting and examining decentralized national highways to ensure the scale and quality of national highways according to approved road network planning and road infrastructure planning; ensuring traffic connectivity according to regulations; and compliance with technical standards and regulations in the road sector.

Mr. Nguyen Manh Thang, Deputy Director of the Vietnam Road Administration, said that continuing to thoroughly implement the policy of decentralization to localities, with the spirit of "Locals decide, localities do, localities take responsibility"; the Vietnam Road Administration has deployed preparation work to ensure the implementation of decentralization of national highway management immediately after the Decree implementing the Road Law comes into effect.

It is expected that after decentralization, the Ministry of Transport will only directly manage about 3,650km of national highways and expressways, accounting for about 16% of the total length of national highways; decentralizing to the provincial People's Committees to manage about 19,000km, accounting for about 84% of the total length of national highways.

Source: https://www.baogiaothong.vn/sau-phan-cap-cuc-duong-bo-se-quan-ly-cac-tuyen-duong-nao-192250111204905093.htm