'Temporary Pause' on Chungcheong Region Metropolitan Railroad Phase 1 Resumes... "Construction to Start Within the Year"
by Jeong Ilwoong
Published 25 Apr.2023 16:35(KST)
The first phase of the Chungcheong Region Metropolitan Railroad project is set to begin construction within this year. This became possible after overcoming the threshold of demand forecast reassessment.
On the 25th, Daejeon City announced that it recently received the final notification from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport that the 'Demand Forecast Reassessment for the First Phase of the Chungcheong Region Metropolitan Railroad Project' has been approved.
The reassessment was conducted by the Korea Development Institute (KDI) starting in August last year, following concerns that some sections overlapped between the first phase of the Chungcheong Region Metropolitan Railroad project and the Daejeon Urban Railway Line 2 (hereinafter Daejeon Tram) project, which was expected to cause changes in transportation demand (unreflected overlap).
With the start of the reassessment, the first phase of the Chungcheong Region Metropolitan Railroad project was temporarily suspended. Moreover, forecasts that the reassessment would be difficult to complete in the first half of this year led to predictions that the project’s resumption would be delayed beyond this year.
However, the city explained that the reassessment was able to be completed early because the difference in demand between conducting the first phase of the Chungcheong Region Metropolitan Railroad project concurrently with the Daejeon Tram project and not doing so was only 13.2%.
If the reassessment had shown a demand decrease of 30% or more, a feasibility reassessment could have been required. A feasibility reassessment would mean reconsidering whether to proceed with the project from scratch, potentially making the project’s continuation uncertain.
Conversely, the reassessment results reflecting the Daejeon Tram demand showed lower-than-expected figures, paving the way for the first phase of the Chungcheong Region Metropolitan Railroad to begin construction within this year. Additionally, the city expects that securing 30 billion KRW in national funding next year will provide momentum for the main project’s advancement.
The first phase of the Chungcheong Region Metropolitan Railroad project is expected to undergo a process of adjusting the project period and negotiating the total project cost between the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (National Railroad Corporation) and the Ministry of Economy and Finance, followed by ordering and contracting procedures, with construction likely to start between November and December this year.
Meanwhile, the first phase of the Chungcheong Region Metropolitan Railroad is a railroad construction project for the section from Gyeryong, Chungnam to Sintanjin, Daejeon (total length 35.4 km).
This project passed the preliminary feasibility study by the Ministry of Economy and Finance in 2015, completed the feasibility study and basic plan in 2018, and has been advancing basic and detailed designs since 2019, but was temporarily suspended last year due to the reassessment.
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