The municipal transport department has proposed that the Ho Chi Minh City-Trung Luong Expressway, which connects the city with the Mekong Delta provinces of Long An and Tien Giang, be widened from four to eight lanes.
In the proposal sent to the HCMC administration Wednesday, the department said the expansion was needed to handle the surge in traffic on the road.
It suggests that the expansion allows the maximum speed to increase from 100 km to 120 km per hour.
The 62 km expressway with four lanes was put into operation 10 years ago. It was the first expressway to connect HCMC to nearby provinces of Long An and Tien Giang and has now been burdened with traffic overload, which is serious during holidays or weekends.
The department said site clearance for such enlargement was already completed in the previous phase of construction.
It proposed the upgrade project follow the public-private partnership (PPP) format and one of the localites that the expressway runs through would be its management authority.
HCMC-Trung Luong Expressway collected tolls from 2011 to 2018. Upon the removal of tolls in early 2019, traffic volume has increased massively to 51,000 cars on daily average, damaging the quality of the road surface.
According to the approved planning for HCMC, the city's traffic system features five expressways with the total tracks of 276.9 km and two ring roads with the length of 287 km. As of now, only two expressways, namely HCMC-Trung Luong and HCMC-Long Thanh-Dau Giay, and a part of Ring Road No.3 with the length of 131 km were open to traffic.