A Japanese-Vietnamese contractor consortium on Sunday started the construction of a bridge – Van Thanh – which is part of a Ho Chi Minh City metro line, the first of its kind in Vietnam.

>> 2nd part of Vietnam’s first metro line breaks ground in southern hub>> Vietnam hub to begin construction of 1st metro line terminal tomorrow >> €850 million pledged for metro line No.5 in HCMC >> ADB gives $500 mln loan to HCMC metro project The Van Thanh Bridge is located in Binh Thanh District and forms a part of bid package No. 2 of the Ben Thanh-Suoi Tien metro line project. The bridge is built by a consortium of Japan’s Sumitomo and Vietnam’s Cienco 6 and expected to be completed in November 2017. It is designed to be 150 meters long and 11.1 meters wide, and have two lanes.

With a vertical clearance of 4.75 meters, the bridge will connect the metro line’s Ba Son station in District 1 to the Van Thanh station in Binh Thanh District. The bridge belongs to the 17.1 km aboveground section of the metro line that is 19.7 km long, running from District 1 through Binh Thanh District, District 2, District 9 and Thu Duc District in Ho Chi Minh City before reaching Di An Town in neighboring Binh Duong Province. This aboveground section will have 11 stations while the 2.6 km underground part of the line will have three stations. The metro line is estimated to cost US$2.49 billion. The investor of the project, the HCMC Urban Railway Management Board, has also started the construction of two flyovers. The first one, 250 meters long, crosses over Dien Bien Phu Street while the other, 267.5 meters long, spans the Saigon River.

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