Only motorbikes and small cars are being allowed on the Phu My Bridge, which spans the Saigon River in Ho Chi Minh City linking Districts 2 and 7, since the city government has yet to decide on the toll for larger vehicles.
The 2 km cable-stayed bridge, which opened to traffic last September, was built to ease congestion on the Saigon Bridge and the downtown area by allowing traffic to bypass them.
Its builder, BOT Phu My Bridge Company, said the delay in allowing vehicles and collecting toll is causing an estimated monthly loss of VND200 billion ($10.6 million).
It has asked the city People’s Committee for permission to collect toll from all kinds of vehicles from March, the company said.
Gridlocked roads continue to haunt HCMC, Vietnam’s most populous metro with 7.1 million residents.
Work on the VND2.1 trillion (US$112 million) bridge began in March 2007.
It has a clearance of 45 meters, which allows large ships to pass beneath.
The bridge’s construction was funded by loans from French banks Société Générale and Calyon and the Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam.
The main contractor was foreign consortium BBBH comprising Germany’s Bilfinger Berger and Australia’s Balderstone Hornibrook.
A build-operate-transfer project, the developer can collect toll on the bridge for 30 years.
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