By KYAW PHONE KYAW | FRONTIER
YANGON — A sweeping upgrade to the dilapidated Yangon Circle Line will be completed within four years, but uncertainty remains over the fate of residents who will need to relocate from homes along parts of the 46-kilometre route.
The Ministry of Transport and Communications will select a contractor for the upgrade plan by the first quarter of 2018 with a deadline to finish work by August 2010, Railways Department general manager for lower Myanmar U Tun Aung Thin told a stakeholder meeting on Tuesday.
Under the department’s plan, maximum speed along the 38-stop Circle Line will rise from 24 to 42 kilometres per hour, with the route’s average total duration to drop from three hours and 20 minutes to one hour and 45 minutes.
Tun Aung Thin added that the upgrade would help to help alleviate Yangon’s steadily worsening road congestion problem, with capacity upgrades projected to increase daily patronage from 73,000 to 260,000 people, along with plans to install automatic signal lights and boom gates at level crossings.
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The ministry has already received a US$206 million official development assistance loan from the Japan International Cooperation Agency to provide for 66 new diesel multiple unit trains. Tun Aung Thin said the total budget for the upgrade had not been finalised at the moment.
Tun Aung Thin said around 40 households would need to relocate as a result of the upgrade, and the project would include finance to relocate these families to the outskirts of town.
“We will give them houses and land as compensation,” he said. “But the location of the substitute land is not confirmed yet. It is probably near East Dagon Township,” he said.
