The Nhon-Hanoi Railway Station metro line’s first ten trains will be brought from France to Hanoi in March 2020, according to Head of Hanoi Metropolitan Railway Management Board (MRB) Nguyen Cao Minh.Minh said on July 31 that the French contractor is producing the first trains for the Nhon-Hanoi Railway Station metro line.
Model of the urban railway train, route No.3, from Nhon to Hanoi Railway Station
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The ten aluminum-alloy trains will be built according to European standards. Each train will have four or five cars that are 2.75-3.0 meters wide and 80-100 meters long in total for each train. Handles for standees will be designed to match Vietnamese people’s height.
The train design was submitted by the French contractor to MRB, and then made public in 2018 for consultation. The survey results show that more than 80% of respondents agreed with the design.
The trains cost VND7.7 trillion ($331 million), of which almost VND3 trillion ($129 million) will be spent on consulting, designing and assembling, while the rest is intended to cover the cost of rail tracks and train depots.
At the end of July, the section of the Nhon-Hanoi Railway Station is completed almost in half. Its elevated sections are 99.5% completed and work on these is being prioritized to meet the deadline next year, while the underground section has been built only 5%, according to the MRB.
The Nhon-Hanoi Railway Station route, the capital’s second metro line after the Cat Linh-Ha Dong route, runs 12.5 kilometers from Nhon area in the western district of Nam Tu Liem, via Kim Ma street to Hanoi Railway Station in the downtown. It will run 8.5 kilometers on elevated tracks through eight stations and the remaining four kilometers underground. The underground track is scheduled to begin operations in 2023.
Hanoi’s first metro line, connecting Cat Linh Station in downtown Dong Da district to the Yen Nghia Station in Ha Dong district, which is said to be 99% completed, has missed its deadline several times. Hanoi’s authority said it would borrow US$1.48 billion from official development assistance (ODA) funds to build a new metro section in 2021.
