Vietnam lacks construction standards for underground car parks

Vietnam has yet to set out common standards for the construction of underground car parks, even though the Ministry of Construction has been working on this matter for over two years.

Nguyen Hong Tien, director of the ministry’s Technical Infrastructure Department, told the Daily on Tuesday that the ministry’s progress has been held up by numerous overlapping issues involving various ministries.

Tien said, for instance, the Ministry of Transport is responsible for traffic circulation at underground car parks, while the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment is in charge of land use and the Ministry of Construction oversees underground car park construction.

He said while waiting for the promulgation of the common standards, domestic developers of underground car park projects could temporarily apply foreign standards for the construction of underground car parks.

He said the application of foreign standards for underground space was guided by the construction ministry in a Circular 18/2010/TT-BXD that was issued in October last year.

Meanwhile, the lack of common standards, more or less, has obstructed the construction progress of several underground car park projects in HCMC.

At the moment, HCMC’s government has already approved four projects of developing underground car parks in the downtown area. However, construction has been suspended due to many reasons, including the lack of common standards.

According to an official of the city’s Department of Transport, related city departments are accelerating the progress of the four projects in District 1 and hope to see construction of all projects begin within this year and next year.

The projects, located at Le Van Tam park, Hoa Lu stadium, Tao Dan stadium and Trong Dong music stage, expect to be operational from 2014 with total investment capital of 5.7 trillion dong to provide parking spaces for nearly 10,000 cars and motorbikes, said the official. – SGT

Posted by VBN on May 6 2011. Filed under Automotive, Construction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry