Hanoi: Not smooth pilot metro line In addition to remarkable cost over-runs, construction on Hanoi’s pilot metro line from Nhon to Hanoi train station also risks dropping behind schedule. The 12.5-kilometre line, developed by the Hanoi Municipal People’s Committee, has already smashed its budget set in 2010. Over a week ago, after the foreign donors agreed further lending for the project, the prime minister agreed to add $393 million euros ($486 million) to this urban train line, of this supplemental ODA sum will be 305 million euros ($377 million) and additional reciprocal capital $88 million euros ($108 million). The government also agreed to loan the Hanoi Municipal People’s Committee the entire ODA supplemental sum while the state budget will fund the additional reciprocal capital amount. In September this year, the committee proposed revising the project finances which would see total investment capital jump from 783 million euros ($968.5 million) to 1.17 billion euros ($1.45 billion). Hanoi leaders revealed that the project’s donors, including French Ministry of the Economy and Finance’s Emerging Countries Reserve (RPE), French Development Agency (AFD), European Investment Bank (EIB) and Asian Development Bank (ADB), had pledged to provide an additional $328 million to the project. With this new financing scheme, the investment ratio for each km of the pilot metro line would average 94 million euros, tantamount to VND2.44 trillion. Irrespective of the technology involved, such a ratio is significantly higher than that at Ho Chi Minh City’s first metro line from Ben Thanh to Suoi Tien which also has similar proportions of over and underground lines. As initially proposed, the Nhon- Hanoi train station metro line will consist of 12.5km 1,435mm-gauge dual track, including 8.5km overhead and 4km underground. The project kicks off construction in 2009 and is slated for completion by 2018. However, work started in December 2006, and four years later in September 2010 the project kicked off construction for a second time at the site of building Nhon depot. Major bottlenecks exist which have hampered construction process. Despite having support from French group Systra in engineering work since December 2007, the project was progressed very slowly and a new deadline of the final quarter in 2018 was set in a recent Hanoi People’s Committee report. This means that even if the new deadline is met, it would have take 12 years to construct just one line. “The Hanoi Municipal People’s Committee needs to report to the premier and Ministry of Planning and Investment on plans for each bidding package to ensure the project actually is finished on time,” the prime minister requested. The metro line is expected to transport 230,000 passengers a day in 2018 at its commissioning, increasing to 428,000 by 2020, and 750,000 by 2030, following the line extensions. By Anh Minh, VIR