Hanoi Metro Report: 2023 edition

This is the third Hanoi Metro Report by Future Southeast Asia. The last report was in July 2022, so this report will cover news since then.

Operating Metro Lines

Line 2A

Line 2A of the Hanoi Metro opened on November 6th 2021, and I reviewed the line in July 2022. I’m still confused about why it’s named Line 2A, but other than that the line has been a patch of (mostly) good news in a sea of bad news about urban rail development in Vietnam.

In May 2023 the Hanoi Metro reported its first annual profit for the year 2022 of nearly VND97 billion ($4.14 million). This is a good result considering that this is a small single line. Not that there should be immediate pressure to turn a profit. No one asks if a highway widening or an intersection overpass is profitable, but it is encouraging news.

The metro company has since reported a profit for the first half of 2023, and has bought two more trains to add to its existing seven.

Passenger numbers are also steadily increasing. An update for Q1 2023 reported 2.65 million passengers, with an average of over 32,000 passengers per weekday, and around 28,000 riders on weekends. Of those, 10,000 passengers use a monthly pass.

Single tickets range from 8,000 VND-15,000 VND (0.33 USD-0.63 USD) and 30,000 VND ($1.24 USD) for a day pass. A monthly pass is priced at 200,000 VND ($8.24 USD).

The construction of Line 2A was delayed by years. and the consequences of the delays are still reverberating. The metro was fined nearly “US$740,300 for late loan payment due to complicated legal procedures which hindered the firm’s ability to allocate capital”.

I wasn’t planning on visiting Line 2A on my most recent trip, but considering that the HCMC Metro has once again been delayed I wanted to ride a metro in Vietnam in 2023.

When I rode the train in 2022 many train tourists like myself were just riding it to have a look. There were even Vietnamese tour groups (identifiable with their tour caps) who were riding for the spectacle.

This time around there were no obvious tourists. There was one photo shoot happening at Cat Linh Station where a glamorous model was holding up a product while the train arrived.

It was good to see passengers on the train during off-peak hours, and no doubt it will be more popular when the next metro line is built. Line 3 will have a station at Cat Linh, but I have not found out how it will interchange. I went back to Line 2A because I wanted to see what future interchange stations look like. I will get to that point in the Metro Map section further down in this article.

Metro Lines Under Construction

I made a table that compared the costs and construction times of first metro systems in Asia, and as far as I could find, Line 2A was the slowest when comparing kilometres built per year. The general theory is that the first line takes longer while a city learns how to build a metro and streamlines the red tape involved in administering a large infrastructure project. This preamble brings us to Line 3.

Line 3

Line 3 Metro (Nhon-Hanoi Station) is 12.5 km in length, with eight elevated stations and four underground stations. Construction began in 2009 (or 2010) and has been delayed numerous times since then. A report in April 2023 said that the “project was 76.5% completed, with the elevated section 99% completed, and the underground section 33% completed”.

The most recent update announced that the elevated section would open on April 30 2024.

I haven’t found a solid construction start date yet as the news articles quote 2009 or 2010. Either way, Line 3 will end up being slower to build (in KMs per year) than Line 2A.

The vice chairman of the Hanoi People’s Council said “if ongoing projects progress as they should, it will take 150 years to complete the 10 urban railways as planned.” This is even worse than the 100-year prediction that an official made about the HCMC Metro (though at this point it is hard to say which city is faring worse for delays).

The National Assembly’s Economic Committee has asked for an explanation in the delays of the Hanoi and HCMC metro projects.

I went for a walk along some of the elevated section, not knowing what to see from my last visit. I wasn’t expecting to see testing happening, so that was a bonus.

Future Lines

In Mat 2023 it was reported that Line 1, Line 3 (extension), and Line 5 would begin construction by 2025.

Line 1

Line 1 is the Yen Vien-Ngoc Hoi metro line. This line will have the most significant impact on Hanoi as it will replace the current Vietnam Railways lines that operate from Hanoi Station.

The proposed North-South high-speed railway will have its terminus station at Ngoc Hoi (about 10 km south of the current Hanoi Station). Passengers will then get Metro Line 1 to the city centre. There were calls to consider keeping the terminal station in the city centre, but the station will move. The metro will go through the area referred to as Hanoi Train Street.

Line 1 will continue from Hanoi Station to Yen Vien, which serves trains to Lao Cai and Dong Dang on the Vietnam-China border. This section is the line that goes around the Old City area (through the currently closed section of Hanoi Train Street) and across the Long Bien Bridge.

In August 2022 it was announced that the “railway infrastructure of Hanoi and Giap Bat train stations will be relocated to make room for the Yen Vien-Ngoc Hoi metro line”.

In April 2023 the Ministry of Transport handed over the project file of the Yen Vien – Ngoc Hoi section of Line No 1 to the Hanoi People’s Committee for further study and investment.

There was no reported timeline of when Hanoi Station will close as the Vietnam Railways station.

Line 2

82% rise proposed for investment of Hanoi’s urban railway No.2 – [24/10/22]
“The Hanoi Metropolitan Railway Management Board has submitted a proposal to the city People’s Committee on the adjustments of investment policy for the Hanoi urban railway line No.2 (Nam Thang Long – Tran Hung Dao).”

Line 2 (Hoan Kiem Line) of the Hanoi Metro is a proposed rapid transit railway that will connect Noi Bai International Airport to the old city area in Hoan Kiem District. This line has been plagued by delays and there haven’t been many recent updates.

I have made a fact sheet for this line (Line 2 Hanoi Metro: Connecting the airport to the old city).

Line 5

Pre-feasibility study report of Hanoi’s metro line No.5 approved – [04/10/23]
“The State Appraisal Council has approved the pre-feasibility study report of Hanoi’s urban metro line No5 project from Van Cao Road to Hoa Lac Road.”

Line 6

Hanoi begins study on urban railway route No.6 – [14/10/22]
The People’s Committee of Hanoi has assigned relevant departments, sectors and the Hanoi Metropolitan Railway Management Board (MRB) to start a project studying the building of the urban railway route No.6, the section from Noi Bai to Ngoc Hoi.

Proposed line to replace BRT

Hanoi proposes metro line that replaces BRT – [18/11/23]
“Hanoi plans to build a metro line on Le Van Luong Street to replace the existing BRT (bus rapid transit) line, as part of its quest to increase public transport options.”

This is a new proposal that has no line number or map.

Metro maps and future interchanges

The official Hanoi Metro website has a map page that shows the future network with an 8-line map (plus monorails). The map is watermarked with a Vietnamese news site, though I can’t find the original source.

A larger version of this map was shared by @HanoiMetro on Twitter without the watermark.

The Hanoi Metro was originally using a map made by Dao Minh Son on Wikipedia.

I went to Line 2A to look for a better map, and a future map was shown at the stations.

The map at the station is different to the map used on the website, and I have not found this version anywhere else. Here is a section of the map. Sorry about the picture quality, but I couldn’t get a clear image of the map without light reflecting from the glass.

This map has the same problem as the online map in that there are few interchange stations shown. There are some interchanges shown, so they know what an interchange is. I am concerned as to why a metro system would be designed without interchange stations.

The best-case scenario is that they haven’t got around to hiring a graphic designer to make an official map. The worst-case scenario is that this is an official plan, and passengers are going to have to walk between stations.

Wikipedia is now using another map that shows interchange stations, though there are no station names. I hope this is what is planned.

The interchange problem is bothering me as it is a problem that has happened in Bangkok, KL, and Manila (among others). Learn from the mistakes of other metro systems and build stations that offer easy interchanges between lines.

I visited some stations to see if they are built for future interchanges. The Cat Linh elevated station of Line 2A is next to Cat Linh underground station of Line 3.

I couldn’t see any obvious connections between the two stations. The map at the metro station is not an encouraging sign that there will be an interchange.

It could also be that this is just sloppy map design. I have no graphic design skills, but I work with a designer who I have trained to draw metro maps. He is a great designer but he had no background in making maps. When we first started making maps, I discovered that a slight change in the position of one line would disturb the interchanges with the other lines. He would send the changes back to me without noticing that the interchange was broken (which he now fixes). This interchange looks like what happens when you move a line on your map and don’t adjust the interchange circle.

The Cat Linh stations shown on the maps used at the Line 3 stations show what looks to be like an interchange.

The system map used at Line 3 stations looks much better. I look forward to a day in the future when I can look back at this map and marvel at what a small map this is.

Line 2 (one line that will connect the airport to Hoan Kiem Lake) is mentioned as ending at Thuong Dinh Station on Line 2A (possibly the reason of naming the line as 2A). I went to Thuong Dinh and it doesn’t look like it’s built to be a future interchange.

Here is what Thuong Dinh looks like on the map used at the stations.

I am looking forward to seeing an updated Hanoi Metro map in the future.