$10 billion needed to speed north-south railway The Railway Administration has asked the Ministry of Transport’s appraisal and approval of a $10 billion plan to modernize the North-South railway. Under the project, the trans-Vietnam railway, running from the Hanoi Railway Station to the Hoa Hung Railway Station in HCM City, will reach railway standards from grade I to II. The average speed will increase to 80-90 km/h for passenger trains and 50-60 km/h for cargo trains from the current speed of 50km/h. The Railways Administration proposed to invest in infrastructure and equipment projects from now through 2020 to upgrade the speed and passenger transport capacity to 15 million passengers and 5 million tons of goods per year, with at least 25 pairs of trains running each day. After 2020, the railway industry will continue to invest in the north-south railway to achieve the average speed of 90 km/h for passenger trains and 60 km/h for cargo trains, with passenger transport capacity of 16 million people/year and 6 million tons of goods/year. The railway industry is expected to build a series of routes to seaports, industrial zones, and tourist areas such as Vung Ang, Chan May, Nhon Hoi, Van Phong and the Bien Hoa - Vung Tau, Saigon - Loc Ninh routes. To ensure the feasibility of this huge project, it will be performed in three phases: 2014-2015 with $580 million, upgrading the Hanoi-Vinh and Nha Trang-Saigon railways at a cost of $5.7 billion and implementing the remaining projects in the third phase. This project will use funding from the state budget, bonds, ODA or projects in the forms of BOT (build-operate-transfer) or BT (built-transfer), and also private sources. At a Q&A session on Wednesday, Minister of Transport Dinh La Thang said the Ministry of Transport was restructuring the railway sector to raise the productivity of passengers and goods transport, to reduce the load for road transport, and to cut transport costs. Tuyet Minh, VietNamNet Bridge