Vietnam plans $6.5B rail link from Ho Chi Minh City to Mekong Delta, first in 70 years

A 175-kilometer railway worth more than VND171 trillion (US$6.5 billion) has been proposed between Ho Chi Minh City and Can Tho, giving Vietnam’s Mekong Delta its first rail link in nearly seven decades. The My Thuan Project Management Board, which drew up the pre-feasibility study submitted to the Ministry of Construction, has proposed building the line entirely with public funds. It would begin at An Binh Station in HCMC’s Di An Ward and end at Can Tho Station in Can Tho’s Hung Phu Ward, running 175.2 km through HCMC, Tay Ninh, Dong Thap, Vinh Long and Can Tho. Passenger trains would run at a design speed of 160 kph and freight at 120 kph, with 12 stations and three depots along the way. The first phase would be a single track at the 1,435-mm standard gauge, later upgraded to double track. Can Tho is widely considered the capital of Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, the country’s rice bowl and the source of most of its seafood and fruit exports. The delta has had no railway since the French colonial-era Saigon-My Tho line closed around 1958. Goods and people now move almost entirely over chronically congested roads and waterways to reach Ho Chi Minh City and its ports. The board’s study forecasts that the HCMC-Can Tho corridor will need to handle about 1.46 billion tons of freight and more than 326 million passenger trips a year by 2050, of which rail could carry roughly 23 million tons and 16 million trips annually. The line is one piece of a rail push Vietnam is pursuing at unusual speed. The centerpiece is the roughly $67 billion North-South high-speed railway, a 1,541-km, 350-kph line between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City due to break ground by the end of 2026, while the national network plan envisions 25 lines totaling about 6,354 km. The HCMC-Can Tho line is a conventional mixed-traffic railway rather than a true high-speed one, but it shares the flagship’s deadline: both are meant to be substantially finished by 2035. About 56% of the route would sit on bridges or viaducts, mainly through urban areas, dense neighborhoods, river crossings and points where it meets existing infrastructure, with the remaining 44% on embankments where the ground is stable and flooding less of a risk. First-phase bridges would be about 6.5 m wide, with spans of 24 m to 450 m. At the Hau River crossing, the railway would share the planned Can Tho 2 Bridge. The line would be electrified at 25 kV alternating current, with passenger services on distributed-power electric multiple units, freight on locomotive-hauled trains, and fiber-optic communications and digital signaling throughout. The consultant set out two cost options. Sharing a road bridge for about 4.7 km at the Hau River crossing would put total preliminary investment at about VND171.3 trillion ($6.51 billion); a separate, dedicated rail bridge would raise it to about VND175.11 trillion ($6.65 billion). Citing the size of Vietnam’s economy and its financing capacity, the consultant recommended funding the line from the state budget. On the drawing board for more than a decade, the project is now reaching its most concrete stage. It is due to go to the National Assembly for investment-policy approval in August 2026, with front-end engineering design finished in the first quarter of 2028, site clearance starting the same quarter, and a contractor selected to break ground in the third quarter. Vietnam Railways would operate the line once it opens. By Anh Duy – VnExpress.net – June 10, 2026

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