HÀ NỘI — The Vietnam Register (VR) on Sunday announced that it had issued temporary registration certificates for 13 trains of the long-delayed Cát Linh-Hà Đông urban railway project.

The certificates were issued to run a trial operation for the whole system, Hà Nội's first urban railway project that has been running behind schedule for years and suffering from enormous cost overruns.

The State quality control agency said that the assessment of the trains’ quality was commenced in September last year and now the inspection was completed.

The official certificates will be issued when the trial operation ends and if the system is deemed safe.

A spokesperson of the Railway Division under the VR said the trains’ inspection was conducted based on national standards, which were regulated by the Ministry of Transport.

The Cát Linh-Hà Đông urban railway system has the total length of more than 13km, running on an overground viaduct, has 12 stations and 13 trains. Each train has four carriages and can transport 960 passengers.

The project has total investment of US$866 million (more than VNĐ20 trillion).

Construction on the railway started in 2008 and was initially expected to be completed in 2013 but has faced several delays.

The MoT is the investor of the project but the Hà Nội People’s Committee is responsible for managing, operating and maintaining the system. The China Railway No 6 Group Ltd Co is the contractor of the project.

Tang Hong, representative of the project’s general contractor, said that last month, the contractor scheduled a trial run of the whole system in 20 days.

But after five days, the railway project management board under the transport ministry asked the contractor to complete several procedures, so the trial run went to a halt.

The trial run will resume soon after receiving approval from the board.

Chargé d'affaires of the Chinese Embassy in Việt Nam Yin Haihong in a recent meeting has urged the Vietnamese authorities and the third-party quality assessor – the France-based consulting firm Apave-Certifier-Tricc consortium (ACT) – to swiftly complete the quality assessment of the entire project so that it could start commercial runs soon. — VNS