City to build tunnel near Cat Lai Port

To deal with chronic traffic congestion on a major road leading to Cat Lai Port in District 2, HCMC is seeking approval from the Government to build an overpass and a tunnel there.
In its recent document submitted to the Government, HCMC proposes implementing the project at My Thuy Roundabout using capital advanced by the investor and paid by the city later. The deferred payment will come with interest.

As proposed, the first phase of the project will consist of an overpass in the direction of Belt Road No. 2 and a tunnel underneath the existing roundabout. The investment cost of phase one is estimated at VND770 billion (over US$35.3 million) as no site clearance and compensation are required.

The city wants to pick an investor via a tender to carry out the first phase of the project. The selected investor will have to advance finance for the project and the city will pay later with interest within 2-5 years as other investment formats are not viable.
The city explains in the document that there will be many challenges and legal conditions when implementing the project under the public-private partnership (PPP) format. It is not easy to execute the project under the build-operate-transfer (BOT), build-transfer-lease (BTL), build-lease-transfer (BLT) and build-transfer (BT) models since the city is copping with budget constraints and lacking in land to embrace the land-for-infrastructure format.

Heavy traffic jams have frequently been seen on the roads leading to Cat Lai Port in the past months, with the most recent jam reported on June 16.

At a meeting with the Ministry of Transport in the middle of this month, director of the HCMC Department of Transport Nguyen Thanh Chung said the number of container trucks moving to and from the port had surged since early last month, from 12,000 trucks to 20,000 trucks a day.

Source: The Saigon Times