Vietnam pours $456M into roads to reach Long Thanh mega airport

Dong Nai City broke ground on July 10 on nearly VND12 trillion (US$456 million) of new and widened roads linking Long Thanh, Vietnam's largest airport, to highways, expressways, industrial parks and seaports.

A new Provincial Road 770B and upgrades to provincial roads 773 and 769 together run about 111 km.

Long Thanh sits about 40 km east of Ho Chi Minh City and is built to handle 25 million passengers a year in its first phase.

State-owned Airports Corporation of Vietnam, the investor, plans to route most of international flights to the country's south through it and to relieve the chronically overcrowded Tan Son Nhat airport in the city center.

The full project, which carries a price tag of around VND336.63 trillion ($12.8 billion), opened technically in December 2025 and is due to take commercial flights this year.

Provincial Road 769 is the one that runs directly to the airport, connecting National Highway 1 at the Dau Giay junction with National Highway 51 at the Loc An junction.

The roughly 29 km route will carry at least six lanes for cars on a roadbed 30.5 to 45 m wide at a cost of nearly VND2.8 trillion ($106 million).

Its approach to an overpass over the North-South railway widens to 43.5 m, with service roads for residents on either side.

Rendering of Provincial Road 773 upon expansion, which links National Highway 1 to Ho Chi Minh City's Ring Road 4. Photo courtesy of the project investor

Provincial Road 770B is the largest of the three, built from scratch at more than VND4.7 trillion ($179 million).

Running nearly 43 km through nine communes and wards, it will carry six lanes for cars, two mixed-traffic lanes and a 9.5 m central median across a 45.5 m surface.

It ties eastern and northeastern Dong Nai City and the Xuan Que-Song Nhan and Bau Can-Tan Hiep industrial parks to the Bien Hoa-Vung Tau Expressway, the Cai Mep-Thi Vai port complex and the airport.

Provincial Road 773 runs 39 km from National Highway 1 to Ho Chi Minh City's Ring Road 4 and will be widened to six or eight lanes with a design speed of 80 kph, at more than VND4.3 trillion ($164 million).

All three have stalled for years over land clearance and planning, and the government has told Long Thanh's builders to finish the first phase and begin operations by the end of 2026.

Nguyen Tuan Anh, deputy chairman of the Dong Nai City People's Committee, said the roads are needed to form a synchronized transport system that can carry passengers and freight once the airport is running.

Alongside the expressways and Ho Chi Minh City's Ring Road 3 and Ring Road 4, the three roads open freight corridors, pull traffic off the existing network and tighten the links between industrial zones, logistics centers, seaports and the airport, city leaders said.

They cast the work as central to Dong Nai's push to draw investment into manufacturing, logistics and higher-value services.