Ho Chi Minh City is applying itself to speed up construction of the first metro line, Ben Thanh - Suoi Tien, and preparing for starting work on the second one, Ben Thanh - Tham Luong, this year.

So far, nearly 89 percent of the workload on Metro Line No. 1 has been completed, deputy head of the HCM City Management Authority for Urban Railways Nguyen Quoc Hien told a ceremony launching tasks of the project earlier this year.

He said relevant parties will strive to restore the ground and traffic in the city’s centre by April 30 and then conduct trial run on several sections. The entire route is expected to operate on a trial basis by December 31, according to Dau tu (Vietnam Investment Review).

This year is key to the Metro Line No. 1 project as the route is scheduled to be put into commercial operation in 2023, Hien noted.

Also at the event, Permanent Vice Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee Le Hoa Binh said city leaders pay great attention to this particularly important project, and that they will increase solving outstanding problems facing it. He asked the investor and contractors to enhance efforts to address difficulties and carry out the project on schedule.

People in HCM City and the country as a whole expect this metro line will create an impulse for local economic development, which has suffered from pandemic-caused difficulties, he added.

Metro Line No. 1, nearly 20km long, has total investment of over 43.7 trillion VND (1.9 billion USD) and consists of three underground stations and 11 elevated ones. It was initially scheduled for completion in late 2021 and run commercially in 2022, but then delayed due to the pandemic’s impact and procedure-related problems.

Meanwhile, site clearance for the Metro Line No. 2 project is also being accelerated.

Construction of this route will begin in the second quarter of 2022, Binh went on, saying that land-related issues and the COVID-19 pandemic hampered the site clearance progress last year.

Metro Line No. 2 needs more than 251,000 square metres of land to be cleared. Over 83 percent of the ground necessary for the project has been handed over so far.

Binh said other key transport projects will also be promoted to boost transport connectivity with the metro lines./.