The Vietnam Expressway Corporation (VEC) reported on October 3 that 142 million vehicles used expressways invested and managed by the firm by the end of September this year.

Noi Bai-Lao Cai Expressway

According to VEC, in the first nine months of 2018, the number of vehicles passing through the VEC-invested expressways rose 11 percent year on year to 30.5 million.

The highest growth was seen in the Cau Gie-Ninh Binh route at 17 percent to 11.4 million vehicles, followed by the Ho Chi Minh City-Long Thanh-Dau Day route with 11 million vehicles.

Among five expressway project of the firm, four have been put into operation with a total length of 500km, namely Cau Gie-Ninh Binh, Noi Bai-Lao Cai, Da Nang-Quang Ngai and HCM City-Long Thanh-Dau Day.

The rest project, Ben Luc-Long Thanh route, is scheduled to complete in 2020, raising the total length of VEC expressways to 550km, accounting for 65 percent of the total length of expressways in the country.

Thai Van Chung, General Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City Transport Association said that the HCM City-Long Thanh-Dau Day expressway has an economic efficiency equivalent to over 3 trillion VND, higher than the average figure of eastern component projects of the North-South Expressway at about 1.4 trillion VND.

The VEC reported that the Noi Bai-Lao Cai expressway served 7.4 million vehicles, 12 percent higher than that of 2017, raising total vehicles passing through the route to 30.5 million in four years since its full operation.

At the same time, after one years of operation from August 2, 2017, the 65km section of Da Nang-Quang Ngai expressway served 567,000 vehicles. After the whole 140km routes put into use on September 2, the route saw 3,300-3,500 vehicles.

In the first nine months, the VEC also rejected 136 vehicles violating expressway transport regulations.-VNA