HCM City fly-over funding plea issued

HCM CITY — The HCM City Department of Transport has again asked the municipal People's Committee to either find investors for building the Nhieu Loc–Thi Nghe elevated road or obtain loans for the purpose.

The road will begin at Lang Cha Ca roundabout in Tan Binh District and run above the Nhieu Loc–Thi Nghe Canal all the way to Nguyen Huu Canh Street near Thi Nghe II Bridge in Binh Thanh District.

It will be more than 8km long, have four lanes, and allow vehicles to travel at 80km per hour.

It is one of four elevated roads to be built under city transport development plans through 2020.

In 2000, the department, then called the Department of Communications and Public Works, asked the People's Committee to put the work in a list of projects open to investors.

In 2006, it recommended to the committee to consider issuing construction bonds to raise capital for the road, but the plan was shelved.

At the end of 2007, GS E&C, a leading global civil, architectural and environmental engineering company based in South Korea, signed a memorandum of understanding with the committee for a feasibility study to build the road in Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) mode.

The study said the road would be 8.5km long and 17.5m wide, have four lanes, and cost US$340 million.

In June 2008, the Korean company asked to build the elevated road in Build – Transfer mode since it would be hard to recoup the investment.

But it withdrew from the project last year pleading lack of funds. — VNS