The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said on the 13th that a privately funded expressway construction project linking Yongin and Seongnam in Gyeonggi Province passed a private investment eligibility review by the Public and Private Infrastructure Investment Management Center (PIMAC) of the Korea Development Institute (KDI). The private investment eligibility review is a process that verifies whether the private investment method is more efficient than a fiscal project.
The project will build a total 15.4-kilometer, four-lane, bidirectional route consolidating the Yeongdong Expressway in Dongbaek-dong, Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, and the Capital Region First Ring Expressway in Sasong-dong, Seongnam. The project was submitted as a private proposal in Jan. 2024 and was analyzed to have secured feasibility after a policy evaluation and an eligibility review.
The total project cost is estimated at about 1.1518 trillion won. The government plans to proceed with follow-up administrative procedures, including a strategic environmental impact assessment, aiming to break ground as early as 2030.
Once the road opens, chronic congestion on the Gyeongbu Expressway and on the Yeongdong Expressway between Pangyo and Singal will ease, and the arterial transportation network in the southeastern Seoul metropolitan area, including Seongnam and Yongin, will be reinforced, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) projected.
Lee U-je, director general for roads at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT), said, "The Yongin–Seongnam Expressway will function as a bypass for congested sections of the Yeongdong Expressway and the Gyeongbu Expressway," and "traffic dispersion effects are expected."