The project to upgrade and expand National Highway 50 has a total investment of 1,498 billion VND. The project includes the construction of a parallel route more than 4 km long and the expansion of the existing National Highway 50 nearly 3 km long. When completed, the entire route will have a width of 34m with 6 lanes, forming a spacious arterial axis at the southern gateway of Ho Chi Minh City.
Although it was expected to be completed by the end of 2025, due to problems in site clearance, the project currently reaches about 95% of the volume.
According to actual observations, the parallel section stretching 4.4 km connecting from Nguyen Van Linh street to old National Highway 50 has now been completely completed. Assessing the effectiveness of the new road axis, many people living around the area said that the congestion situation on old National Highway 50 has clearly decreased. Especially during rush hour or holidays, Tet, when the number of vehicles from the Mekong Delta provinces pouring in increases sharply, vehicles traveling on the new route are very easy, people no longer have to endure the scene of moving little by little like in previous years.
In the project to upgrade 2.6 km of existing National Highway 50 (calculated from the intersection with the parallel road to the Long An border), the working atmosphere is currently very urgent. The contractor is diligently handling the final parts such as paving the road surface, installing traffic signs and medians.
Next to it, Ong Thin bridge across the Can Giuoc River - one of the key items of the project - has also completed the main span section. The team of workers is focusing on building access roads to both ends of the bridge, completing the road surface and installing protective railings.
However, a major obstacle on the entire route is the "bottleneck" section extending about 500m right at the connection point with the Ben Luc - Long Thanh expressway access road. This section is suddenly narrowed due to lack of synchronous construction. The Ho Chi Minh City Traffic Construction Investment Project Management Board (Traffic Board) informed that this scope belongs to another independent project. The Board has developed an investment policy and is waiting for approval from the City People's Committee to soon deploy it to ensure continuity.
In addition, inter-regional connectivity infrastructure is still not truly synchronized when the connecting section of National Highway 50 located in Tay Ninh province is still quite narrow. The road surface in many sections is only 2 lanes in scale, limiting the overall traffic capacity.
Explaining why the entire project cannot be completed, the investor representative pointed out that the biggest barrier lies in the site clearance stage, because there are still 2 households that do not agree with the complaint resolution results. In the upcoming plan, the Traffic Board said that it will focus on coordinating with relevant parties to remove site difficulties, setting a goal to technically open the entire road axis before June 30 and accept the project completion in 2026.
The comprehensive clearing of the arterial route National Highway 50 is not simply to eliminate traffic jams and shorten travel time. This is also an important lever to exploit urban development potential, promote logistics networks and economic trade for the entire southern gateway area of Ho Chi Minh City.
