Government prioritizes high-speed railway in Mekong Delta

The government is giving priority to express routes in the Mekong Delta, especially the express railway connecting Ho Chi Minh with Can Tho city, the region's heart, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh said.

The Politburo, the Party's premier decision-making body, has approved the HCMC-Can Tho expressway railway in principle, and the government is in talks with partners, the PM told a meeting with voters in Can Tho on Sunday.

Home to about 22 million people, the Mekong Delta comprises Can Tho and the provinces of Long An, Dong Thap, Tien Giang, Vinh Long, Tra Vinh, Ben Tre, An Giang, Hau Giang, Soc Trang, Bac Lieu, Ca Mau, and Kien Giang. Can Tho is one of the country’s five centrally-run cities, together with Hanoi and Hai Phong in the north, Danang in the central region, and Ho Chi Minh City in the south.

At present, Vietnam’s North-South railway ends in HCMC. It still uses a track gauge of about one meter which has been in use for more than 100 years, with no high-speed trains running on the single-track network.

The Ministry of Transport is speeding up preparatory work for a proposed high-speed railway linking HCMC with Can Tho. Public-private partnership (PPP) models will be used for the project.

Vietnam’s Railway Project Management Board is responsible for making detailed studies on the passenger and freight needs of the proposed railroad in order to work out suitable investment phases to assure cost-effectiveness.

The board had earlier estimated the key project would cost up to $9 billion or so. The railway would go through HCMC, Binh Duong, Long An, Tien Giang, Vinh Long, and Can Tho. The total length would be 174.5 km, with 15 stations and 11 maintenance and repair stops on the route.

The proposed HCMC-Can Tho line would use an international track gauge of 1,435 millimeters. The proposal says the project, being double-track instead of single-track, would operate both passenger and freight trains. For passenger trains, the designed maximum speed is 190km/h and freight trains would run below 120km/h.

In 2020, the Mekong Delta topped the country’s output of rice at 24.51 million tons, or 56% of the total; 617,700 tons of shrimp (83.51%); 1.14 million tons of pangasius (98%); and 4.3 million tons of fruit (60%).