A section of Mai Son - National Highway 45 is invested in a phased manner with a scale of 4 lanes, without a continuous emergency lane.

This is one of the notable information in Official Dispatch No. 3131/BTVT - KHĐT recently sent by the Ministry of Transport to the National Assembly Delegation of Binh Phuoc province to respond to the petition sent by voters of Binh Phuoc province after the 6th Session of the 15th National Assembly regarding the investment in phases for a number of expressways.

According to the Ministry of Transport, in the Road Network Planning for the 2021-2030 period, with a vision to 20501, expressways are all planned in the completion phase with a scale of 4-10 lanes to meet future transportation needs, ensuring a long-term vision.

In recent times, the demand for investment capital for developing transport infrastructure in general and investment in developing expressways in particular is very large while the budget capital is limited, so investment phasing is a suitable solution, both ensuring compliance with planning, design standards, and transportation needs in the immediate period, while ensuring the ability to balance capital and to soon deploy the construction of many expressways, meeting the needs of socio-economic development.

The Ministry of Transport has consulted the experience of some countries in the world to consider investment phases (road cross-section width) for some routes with low transport demand in the early stages of operation; for routes with high transport demand, investment has been made immediately on a complete scale such as the Hanoi - Hai Phong route, Dau Giay - Phan Thiet, My Thuan 2 bridge...

The expressways put into operation in recent times have all ensured quality, met transportation needs, promoted clear effectiveness in socio-economic development, ensured national defense and security, resolved traffic congestion in large cities and contributed to reducing traffic accidents.

However, the operation of expressways with investment divergence still has some limitations such as: investment divergence with a 2-lane cross-section width, no median strip arrangement, potentially causing traffic safety risks on 4-lane roads with intermittent emergency parking strips, potentially causing congestion in case of incidents if not handled promptly; low operating speed.

To overcome limitations in the operation and exploitation of expressways with a divergent scale, enhance traffic safety, improve the speed of exploitation and investment efficiency of expressways, and implement the direction of the Prime Minister in Official Dispatch No. 16/CD-TTg dated February 21, 2024 and Document No. 140/VPCP-CN dated January 6, 2024, the Ministry of Transport has issued a document requesting localities assigned to be the managing agencies of expressway projects to review and report on the investment implementation plan to expand expressways with divergent investment so that the Ministry of Transport can synthesize and propose and report to the Prime Minister.

The Ministry of Transport has also developed the Expressway Design Standards, expected to be issued in the first quarter of 2024, which stipulates that the investment scale in the phase must meet a minimum of 4 complete lanes, fully arrange emergency lanes and synchronously invest in works serving exploitation such as traffic monitoring and control systems, rest stops, etc. to ensure convenience, safety, and increase speed during operation and exploitation.

In addition, the Ministry of Transport is speeding up the completion of investment procedures to expand some routes from 2 lanes to 4 lanes and from 4 lanes to 6 lanes.

“The Ministry of Transport submitted to the National Assembly for approval the Road Law at the 7th Session, which includes a mechanism to allow the expansion, renovation, upgrading, and modernization of expressways under the PPP method, using BOT contracts to mobilize non-budgetary resources to participate in investment in transport infrastructure,” said the Ministry of Transport.