Le Quang Hanh, Deputy CEO of construction firm FECON, which is a contractor for the Nhon-Hanoi Railway Station metro line, said that the drilling, the first major process of the underground construction, will begin after the ongoing land clearance is finished this year.

The contractor will drill the tunnel with the same boring machine used last year for the first metro project in Ho Chi Minh City, he told reporters Wednesday, adding that the machine is capable of drilling 12 meters a day.

Engineers and staff from the HCMC project will be trained overseas from now until the end of the year to prepare for the construction in Hanoi next year, he said.

Work on the underground section for the capital city’s second metro line is now five percent complete, comprising land clearance and measurements to prepare for the drilling, according to a recent report by the Hanoi Metropolitan Railway Management Board (MRB).

Hanoi’s second metro line, the Nhon-Hanoi Railway Station route, will run 12.5 kilometers from the Nhon area in the western district of Nam Tu Liem via Kim Ma Street to Hanoi Railway Station on Le Duan Street.

It will run 8.5 kilometers on elevated tracks through eight stations and the remaining four kilometers underground. 

The metro line is set to receive its first train next year and begin operations in April 2021 on the elevated track, which is now 99.5 percent complete. The underground track is scheduled to begin operations in 2023.

The Nhon-Hanoi Railway Station metro line has a total investment of VND36 trillion ($1.56 billion), which has been sourced from official development assistance (ODA) funds.

The capital’s first metro line, connecting Cat Linh Station in downtown Dong Da District to the Yen Nghia Station in Ha Dong District, is said to be 99 percent complete, having missed its deadline several times.

The city said last month it would borrow $1.48 billion from ODA funds to build a new metro section in 2021.