On April 27, the fence surrounds the construction site was removed and trees were planted to celebrate Reunification Day on April 30. Lam Son Park will be restored as city authorities instructed agencies to give the cityscape from Le Loi Street to Ben Thanh Market a facelift.

Planting flowers outside Ho Chi Minh City Opera House

Ba Son Station and HCM City Opera House Station are two of the line's underground stations. They are 190 metres long, 26 metres wide with four floors. The first floor will be the waiting area, ticket machines and information stands. The second and fourth floor will be the train station, the third floor will store equipment for station staff, disaster control centre, and electrical equipment rooms as well as air conditioners and ventilation systems.

The underground stations are being completed

The ground clearance task was completed 127 days earlier and the first floor was completed 96 days ahead of schedule. The city urban railway management board and the contractor have worked hard to overcome difficulties during the outbreak.

Bui Xuan Cuong, head of HCM City Urban Railway Management Board, said, "In the coming time, we’ll work with the contractors to deal with problems in the contracts, disbursement and to improve the procedures in order to complete the line as soon as possible."

Nearly 20 km of the line, from Ben Thanh Station in District 1 to Long Binh Depot in District 9, has been cleared. In June, the authorities will start the trial run. The trial run will be divided into several phases and sections. Metro Line 1 will have 17 trains, each train will have three passenger carriages.

Ben Thanh Market Station

The management board is speeding up to complete other packages like the signal system so the project will be 85% completed in 2020 and ready for operation in late 2021. The funding for the project has been secured after the city people's committee adjusted the total investment.

The contractors were asked to monitor the situation and protect the employees' health amid the virus outbreak.

Vo Van Hoan, chairman of HCM City People's Committee, said, "The metro line marks a major change and development of the city for the future. Both the authorities and the public hope that the project will be completed soon. We have plans to let the public visit the completed areas."

Opera House metro station’s first basement completed

An escalator for passengers moving from the first basement to the second one at the Opera House metro station in downtown HCMC

The first basement of the Opera House station of HCMC’s first metro line project has essentially reached completion, stated the municipal Urban Railway Management Board on April 26.

The management board and the project’s construction unit completed the basement’s construction six days earlier than planned and 96 days earlier than initially expected.

The first basement features modern facilities including a waiting lounge, ticket machines and automated fee collection gates. From this basement, passengers can easily move to the second and fourth basements, which will function as platforms where they can get board trains.

The Metro Line No.1, which connects the landmark Ben Thanh Market in downtown HCMC and Suoi Tien Theme Park in District 9, is 72% complete and is expected to reach 85% completion by the end of this year.

Also, the project’s elevated sections have been connected and the roofing for its stations is over 90% complete.

Besides this, the joining of two underground tracks under the CP1a and CP1b packages, to be completed in February, has enabled the connection of the 19.7-kilometer-long metro line.

The next components of the project will be sped up in the coming months, including the installation of the railway and electrical systems as well as other equipment at the stations, aiming to meet 85% of the target for the project’s workload by end-2020 and put it into operation in 2021.

Earlier, the management board and construction unit on April 24 had removed a temporary barricade at a construction site stretching from Dong Khoi to Nguyen Hue streets, restoring the landscape of the downtown area. Dtinews/SGT

HCM City’s first metro line trains under final technical check in Japan

Trains for HCM City’s first metro line, which runs between Ben Thanh Market in District 1 and Suoi Tien Theme Park in District 9, are undergoing final technical inspection in Japan, according to the HCM City Management Authority for Urban Railways.

HCMC: First metro line will have trial run in third quarter

HCM City plans to launch a trial run of the first metro line section between Binh Thai intersection and Long Binh Depot in District 9 in the third quarter.