Yangon Circular Railway Renovation and Upgrading Project Is To Be Started

Yangon circular railway upgrading and renovation project is started on 21st February (today). Therefore, Myanmar Railways will change the schedule of the Yangon circular railway. At a press conference held on 20th February, the responsible officials requested the public to understand if there is any difficulty for the commuters during renovation period, according to Myanmar Railways.

U Htun Aung Thin, General Manager of Myanmar Railways (Lower Burma) said the western side of the circular railways will be implemented firstly and Myanmar Railways chose the A1 Company to implement t that phase. “We’re going to try for the passengers to be convenient during upgrading period as much as we can. In addition, we will monitor the upgrading processes and support everything necessary to be carried out,” he said.

For the western side, the first phase is the Insein-Danyingone route which is scheduled to be completed on 31st May. The upgrading plan will be suspend in the rainy season. And the other phases of the upgrading plan will be started on 31st October, said Myanmar Railways Manager U Zaw Lwin.

Myanmar Railways expects the whole upgrading plan to be completed by the end of 2019.

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The circular train to the University of Computer in Shwepyithar Township will be temporarily suspended and those who purchased monthly pre-tickets will be got back one month payment, according to Manager U Zaw Lwin.

Moreover, the schedule of the highway railways routes connected to the circular railway will be changed a little, said U Kyaw Kyaw Myo, General Manager of Transportation Department under the Myanmar Railways.

“We planned to reduce the number of trains a little but we will plan not to reduce in the numbers of commuters with the same number of trains before,” he said.

In addition, in the phase of renovation work, only one side of railway line will be used for the going and coming route. Therefore, all the passengers need to be cautious, U Kyaw Kyaw Myo said.

Although the Yangon Circular Railway has been existed for 60 years since 1958, the renovation and upgrading plan can be started only in the present time.
The upgrading plan will use more than USD$ 206 million of Japan Government’s loan and USD$ 94 million of Myanmar Government’s budget, according to the initial statement of Myanmar Railways.

After upgrading the circular railway, the new trains can be run on the circular route. If so, it would cut down about one hour of travel time.

The current circular railway route is 29 miles long and it takes two hours and 50 minutes to complete the route, however, the upgrade is completed, it would take one hour and 50 minutes.

At present, there are 90,000 passengers per day but once the upgrading plan is completed, it is expected that there would be 300,000 passengers per day, according to the expectation of Myanmar Railways.

Credit: 7Daydaily
Translated by: iMyanmarHouse.com