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Ho Chi Minh City is going to spend nearly $750 million on an elevated road stretching more than 30 kilometers to alleviate traffic in the downtown area.
The road will run from the Hanoi Highway at the border of District 9 and Thu Duc District in the northeast of the city to Tan Tao Street in Binh Tan District to the city’s west, local media reported.
Construction is expected to start next year and will take four years to complete. Investors will be allowed to collect toll fees once it opens.
Cuu Long, a state-owned infrastructure developer and one of the investors of the project, said current traffic between Thu Duc and Binh Tan is overburdened.
Ho Chi Minh City plans to build five elevated roads totaling more than 70 kilometers to ease urban congestion, but has yet to begin on any of them.
Private vehicles have been blamed for worsening traffic jams in the city, which is the country’s largest with 12 million people including migrants. Statistics showed that around 4,200 new cars and 9,000 motorbikes hit the city's streets every month.
Buses are the only form of public transport available in the city, but passenger numbers are falling as a lack of investment takes its toll on the service.
HCMC is planning to build a metro network, but the first service linking the downtown area with District 9 will not be completed until 2020 following various delays.
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