Daejeon Tram Construction Project 'Positive Signal'... Targeting Groundbreaking in the First Half of Next Year

The construction project for the Daejeon Urban Railway Line 2 Tram (hereinafter referred to as Daejeon Tram) has received a green light.

Provided by Daejeon City

On the 24th, Daejeon City announced that it recently completed budget negotiations reflecting the revised and supplemented plans for the Daejeon Tram construction project, including the introduction of a fully catenary-free system and underground construction for four sections, in coordination with central government ministries.

The total project cost for the Daejeon Tram, as determined in the budget negotiations, is 1.4091 trillion KRW. This is an increase of 659.9 billion KRW compared to the initially approved total project cost of 749.2 billion KRW.

The final project cost will be confirmed after a re-examination of the project plan’s appropriateness by the Korea Development Institute (KDI), and the city aims to commence construction of the Daejeon Tram project in the first half of next year.

Previously, after changing the project plan from an elevated magnetic levitation system during the 6th elected administration to a tram system, the city faced difficulties in progressing the project due to the government’s decision to re-investigate feasibility.

According to the Ministry of Economy and Finance’s total project cost management guidelines, the Daejeon Tram project was in a situation where it had to be reconsidered from the beginning whether to proceed with the project.

The guidelines require a feasibility re-investigation if the total project cost increases by more than 15% for projects with a total cost exceeding 100 billion KRW.

The Daejeon Tram was subject to a feasibility re-investigation because its total project cost nearly doubled compared to the budget initially approved by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.

However, recently, the Ministry of Economy and Finance decided to review the appropriateness of the project plan rather than conduct a feasibility re-investigation for the Daejeon Tram construction project, increasing the possibility of normal project progress.

In the case of a feasibility re-investigation, the project’s continuation must be reconsidered from scratch, which could make the project’s progress uncertain. On the other hand, a review of the project plan’s appropriateness is conducted on the premise of project continuation, examining the appropriate scale and efficient alternatives, thus imposing relatively less burden.

In particular, since the Daejeon Tram underwent a project plan appropriateness review once during the government’s exemption from the preliminary feasibility study in 2019, there are expectations that this recent review will proceed smoothly as well.

At that time in 2019, the city increased the total project cost from 663.9 billion KRW to 749.2 billion KRW during the six-month project plan appropriateness review.

Once the project plan appropriateness review is completed, the city can fully proceed with the Daejeon Tram project through procedures such as adjusting the total project cost, changing the basic plan, and detailed design.

Building on this momentum, the city plans to shorten the project period by concurrently advancing more than two administrative procedures, such as basic design and detailed design, which are usually conducted sequentially, during the Korea Development Institute’s project plan appropriateness review period to accelerate project progress.

Lee Jang-woo, Mayor of Daejeon, said, “Since the budget increase is unprecedentedly large, there were many difficulties during the budget negotiation process, including discussions about feasibility re-investigation. As the Daejeon Tram project has been delayed for a long time, we will focus administrative efforts on advancing the project period to enable construction to start in the first half of next year.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.