A groundbreaking ceremony for building a 140 km expressway to link Quang Ngai province to Da Nang City was conducted yesterday in the province. The facility will help improve traffic in the region and enable a means of international transportation between Lao, Cambodia and Vietnam. The ceremony took place in Son Tinh District on Sunday, with the attendance of Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.   The project costs an estimate of US$1.472 billion, of which $673 million is a loan from Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), $631 million is from the World Bank, and the remaining amount is from the Vietnamese Government. The expressway is expected to be nearly 140 km, of which 131.5 km are expressways and the rest connects the expressways to National Highway 1. The width of the expressway will be 26 meters, including four lanes for vehicles to run at a speed of 120 kph. As part of the north-south road route, the expressway will run from Tuy Loan Town, Hoa Vang District, to western Qung Ngai province. The expressway will have subsidiary works such as underground structures, water drainage systems, and other infrastructures. Upon completion, the expressway will shorten the travel time between Da Nang, Quang Nam and Quang Ngai, help reduce traffic overload on National Highway 1, and enable international transportation between Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam through the East-West corridor to a number of seaports in central Vietnam.