On April 19, Vietnam Expressway Corporation (VEC) held a ceremony to open an additional 20 km of the Ben Luc - Long Thanh Expressway project, from the National Highway 1 intersection to the Nguyen Van Tao intersection (Nha Be district) on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Liberation of the South and National Reunification (April 30, 1975 - April 30, 2025).
The Ben Luc - Long Thanh Expressway construction project is a national key project on the North - South Expressway axis invested by VEC.
The project has a total length of 57.8 km, passing through 3 provinces and cities: Long An, Ho Chi Minh City and Dong Nai, with a total investment of VND 29,587 billion.
Previously, on the occasion of the Lunar New Year 2025, VEC temporarily put into operation two sections of the route, including the section from the Ho Chi Minh City - Trung Luong intersection to National Highway 1 (about 3 km) and the section from Phuoc An intersection to National Highway 51 (about 7 km).
After completion and operation, the Ben Luc - Long Thanh Expressway will connect the traffic of the Western and Southeast regions, especially Ho Chi Minh City, contributing to reducing congestion and pressure on traffic on National Highway 1, National Highway 51, Ho Chi Minh City - Long Thanh - Dau Giay Expressway.
At the same time, it plays an important role in promoting socio-economic development, ensuring national security and defense in the key economic region of the South.
The western section of the Ben Luc - Long Thanh expressway construction investment project from the Ho Chi Minh City - Trung Luong intersection to the Nguyen Van Tao intersection has a total length of more than 21 Km, passing through 2 provinces and cities: Long An (Ben Luc district, Can Giuoc district) and Ho Chi Minh City (Binh Chanh district, Nha Be district).
The expressway is designed according to the standards of a type A expressway with 4 lanes for traffic, designed speed of 100 km/h.
General Director of Vietnam Expressway Corporation (VEC) Pham Hong Quang said that the remaining two "bottlenecks" of the project, Binh Khanh Bridge and Phuoc Khanh Bridge, are being focused on by VEC. Binh Khanh Bridge is expected to open to traffic at the end of September this year. As for Phuoc Khanh Bridge, because the Japanese contractor terminated the contract, VEC is re-calling and striving to open to traffic around mid-2026.
Looking back at 50 years of development of the Vietnamese transport sector after national reunification, Mr. Pham Hong Quang highly appreciated the remarkable changes, especially in the field of highways.
If before 2015, the whole country only had about 400 km of expressway invested by VEC, then the period from 2015 to present witnessed a strong breakthrough. VEC aims to open about 3,000 km of expressway to traffic by the end of 2025, basically completing the North-South axis," said Mr. Quang.
