Proposal to build elevated National Highway 5

At the end of 2024, the Hai Duong Department of Transport proposed that the Ministry of Transport study, soon plan and invest in the construction of National Highway 5 according to the elevated road option. This proposal received the attention and agreement of the people of the localities where National Highway 5 passes through.

Many people believe that if the plan to build the elevated National Highway 5 is implemented, it will create a breakthrough in socio-economic development, not only for the localities where National Highway 5 passes through, but also contribute to promoting the economic triangle of Hanoi - Hai Phong - Quang Ninh to develop even more strongly.

As a resident living along Highway 5 and regularly traveling on this route for nearly 30 years, I have witnessed many extremely tragic traffic accidents. The causes of the accidents are many, such as traffic awareness, overloaded traffic, especially container trucks...

But above all, there are still shortcomings in the traffic infrastructure. To limit traffic accidents, in recent years, many speed limit signs have been placed by the authorities on this national highway. For a long time, many people have compared Highway 5 to an urban road. Because after Highway 5 was opened to traffic in 1998, along the two stops of this road, houses were built close together, many industrial parks, industrial clusters, and urban areas sprung up like mushrooms, making Highway 5 extremely stuffy.

Industrial and urban development also attracts hundreds of thousands of workers from all over to work and live here, making Highway 5 even more overloaded.

Currently, traffic volume on National Highway 5 is 90,000 vehicles/day and night, exceeding the design volume by 6 times.

Regarding the speed of traffic on this national highway, the average speed for cars is only 50 - 60 km/h, equal to 50 - 60% of the designed speed. As for container trucks - the most common vehicle passing through here, the actual speed is unknown but it is certainly very slow. Therefore, many container truck drivers have to drive from around 1 am on this route to avoid congestion.

Currently, there are many traffic jams on National Highway 5 such as: Phu Thai, Lai Khe, Lai Vu Industrial Park (Kim Thanh), Tu Minh, Dai An Industrial Park (Hai Duong City)... In particular, every time a serious traffic accident occurs, National Highway 5 is jammed for kilometers, even tens of kilometers for many hours. This leads to traffic jams, especially traffic jams for goods, significantly affecting the production and business activities of people and enterprises.

Some industrial parks, industrial clusters, and urban areas are continuing to be invested in and built near Highway 5, so in the coming time, it is predicted that this route will be even more seriously overloaded. Solutions to minimize the shortcomings of Highway 5 have been and are being implemented such as building service roads, overpasses, etc., but they are very costly and not really effective. Therefore, in the long term, the construction of Highway 5 above ground will basically overcome the existing shortcomings of this route.

The investment cost for building elevated Highway 5 is certainly very high. However, if there is a thorough survey and planning, specific investment phases, especially a mechanism to provide incentives and attract investment from businesses, it may not be too difficult. However, if conditions are still difficult and there are not enough resources to invest fully, the Ministry of Transport should study to build elevated Highway 5 in locations and areas with many shortcomings in traffic infrastructure first.

Route 5 has a total length of 116 km, of which the section through Hai Duong is 44 km long - the section with the most problems. Therefore, it is possible to study to build this elevated section of Route 5 first, then when there are enough resources, the entire route will be built.

Building elevated Highway 5 is also a solution to create more room and space to promote stronger socio-economic development in the Red River Delta.

Currently, the above proposal of the Department of Transport is still under research and consideration.