VietNamNet Bridge – Traffic jams in Vietnam’s biggest city are daily getting worse. They not only hinder the city’s development but also roil the lives of its residents. Outwitting the tie-ups has become an obsession of HCM City’s people whenever they leave their home.
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| Traffic jam in HCM City. |
Facing the fact that city authorities have run out of remedies for ‘traffic jam disease,’ the people of Ho Chi Minh City have no option but to learn how to coexist with this natural calamity, just as the Mekong Delta’s residents are resigned to ‘living with floods.’
Too few streets, too many vehicles = gridlock
HCM City has about 3300 kilometers of roads and streets, equivalent to 26 square kilometers of pavement. The city’s total area is 2095 square kilometers, so the ratio of road to total area is about 1.5 kilometers per square kilometer, or about one-tenth the world standard for cities. Viewed another way, roads and streets take up 1.36 percent of HCMC’s total area, compared to a world standard of 20 to 25 percent.
And the number of vehicles is soaring. The city has around 4 million vehicles, including 3.8 million motorbikes. Every day, another 500,000 motorbikes and 60,000 cars carrying commuters from adjacent provinces.
Municipal Department of Transport’s director Tran Quang Phuong is fond of saying that “if all these vehicles were on the road, the total road area is not enough for any of them to move.”
Dr. Pham Xuan Mai of the HCM City University of Technology calculates that motorbikes alone require from 12 to 48 square kilometers of pavement.
The surface of the narrow streets is further narrowed because of construction works, which the local people call ‘blockhouses.’ The more than 250 projects being implemented on hundreds of roads make traffic jams worse.
Key arteries into the city centre like Truong Chinh – Cach Mang Thang Tam, Le Van Sy, Nguyen Van Troi, Nam Ky Khoi Nghia and Vo Thi Sau have plenty of ‘blockhouses’ these days.
The city government has requested that traffic police be assigned to project sites to guide traffic, but the police officers only work at some sites.
Truong Chinh Street, which becomes Cach Mang Thang Tam Street, is altogether seven kilometers long. Along its route are some 14 construction sites, each narrowing the road by more than half. If traffic police are not present, this street is always tied up in traffic jam after traffic jam, a sea of vehicles.
The situation is no better on Le Van Sy, Vo Thi Sau, Hai Ba Trung and Nguyen Van Troi streets. The average speed of vehicles on these roads is just two or three kilometers per hour and sometimes approaches zero.
If there’s a construction site, there’s a traffic jam.
Traffic jams even at night
“The ratio of traffic jams exceeds the permitted level by 11 to 23 times. Economic losses caused by traffic jams are estimated at 14.3 trillion dong ($841 million) per year, 5.1 percent of the city’s gross domestic product,” said Dr. Mai.
Though the city’s residents can hardly bear the situation now, they’ve learned that the Department of Transport will continue construction projects on nearly 100 kilometers of road this year.
Oppressed by terrible traffic jams that are as regular as one’s daily bowls of rice, and the helplessness of the transportation authorities, the online community is passing around a sarcastic ‘advertisement’ that spoofs the HCM City Department of Transportation. According to the ‘ad,’ “a new movie will soon be released entitled Traffic Jams on Every Millimeter, a rivetingly tragi-comic drama. The movie allegedly features more than 8 million actors and hundreds of kilometers. The actors shuffle along roads littered by blockhouses, barriers, sewage, rainy water and dust. The film will air from 6am to 7pm every day, and continuously when it rains.”
Adapting to the unavoidable
Temporary solutions such as re-structuring traffic flows and increasing the number of bus trips cannot solve the problem. It may take the city ten years or more to solve traffic jams by building more roads and an urban light rail system while restricting personal vehicles.
For now, the city’s people have no alternative to peaceful coexistance with traffic jams.
For the past three months, Nguyen Huu Tuyen, a staff of a company based on Truong Dinh Road, has changed his schedule to accommodate the traffic jams. Previously, Tuyen got up at 5.30am to exercise until 6am. He and his son left their house at 6.15 and, after breakfast, Tuyen dropped the child at school at 6.45. In the evening, Tuyen left his office at 5pm to pick up his son.
However, after many blockhouses sprang up on Truong Chinh – Cach Mang Thang Tam road, Tuyen had to change his schedule to live in peace with traffic jams.
“To avoid traffic jams, I and my son have to leave home at 5.45am. At that time my boy is still half-asleep. I cannot pick him up at 5pm any more so I’ve arranged for a xe ôm (motorbile taxi) driver to pick him every afternoon. That costs me 450,000 dong per month,” Tuyen complained.
Tuyen doesn’t exercise at home in the morning any longer. Instead, after work, he works out at Tao Dan park, near his office, before returning home. Tuyen’s adjustment to the certainty of traffic jams is fairly typical in HCM City.
Some government agencies have recently issued tips on how to live in peace with traffic jams. The pioneer is the People’s Committee of District 10, which has erected traffic flow billboards. Along impacted streets like To Hien Thanh, Ly Thuong Kiet, Thanh Thai and Su Van Hanh, the red boards with white or yellow letters show drivers how to escape from traffic jams on main roads during peak hours by using alleys.
District 10 Deputy Police Chief Le Van Doan said District 10 has set up nearly 100 boards of this kind..
The City Department of Transportation has also devised a road map that points out the positions of ‘blockhouses’ in HCM City. The map is updated on a weekly basis on the department’s website (sgtvt.hochiminhcity.gov.vn) and for the local media.
The department is also working with some IT firms to establish a traffic-jam warning program and show the shortest ways to avoid traffic jams through mobile phone messages (SMS).
VietNamNet/LD
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