VietNamNet Bridge - Minister Dinh La Thang told correspondents on the sidelines of the ongoing National Assembly session that the ministry does not approve of the Vietnam Railway Corporation’s proposal to build a trans-Vietnam one-meter gauge railway, saying that the suggestion was "not new and inappropriate."

In the proposal, the Vietnam Railway Corporation explained that the current north-south railway was overloaded. It will take at least 30 years to build a high-speed railway so another one meter-gauge rail will address immediate demands.

According to Minister Thang, such a railway is only suitable for the short term and it would be a big waste.

Thang said that this proposal is not new and is one of the four options suggested by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in the Vietnam railway development plan for mid-2013.

JICA called it the B1 scheme with the objective to upgrade the existing railway into a double gauge route to improve train speed.

Dr. Vuong Dinh Khanh, former deputy director of the Vietnam Railway Corporation, also opposed this proposal.

"I support the construction of a high-speed rail up to 160-200 km/h, then raising it to 300 km/h," Khanh said.

"We should not build two north - south railway systems, especially for a country with a narrow width like Vietnam. Not to mention if we maintain the current railway (when Vietnam has high-speed rail), the annual expenditures for maintenance would be very expensive," he stressed.

In late May, the Vietnam Railway Corporation submitted its plan to build another trans-Vietnam one meter-gauge railway to the Ministry of Transport. It calculates that if this new route is built, the transportation capacity of the north-south railways will quadruple (with over 100 pairs of trains each day), reducing overload of the north-south highway.

My Linh