'Strange phenomena' on the highway

From pedestrians to... stray cattle

Not only is it lacking and small, the important reason why expressways often experience serious congestion is due to the lack of synchronization of connecting projects. For example, the bottleneck of the Ho Chi Minh City - Long Thanh - Dau Giay Expressway (HLD) for many years has been the An Phu intersection (Thu Duc City, Ho Chi Minh City) and the intersection of the expressway with National Highway 51. The density of cars and container trucks turning onto the expressway is very high, but the roundabout at the intersection with the expressway has a small area. The narrow road leading to the expressway has led to traffic conflicts between vehicles going from Bien Hoa to Vung Tau and from Vung Tau turning onto the expressway to Ho Chi Minh City. On the other hand, the project to clear the An Phu intersection was proposed in 2017 with an initial budget of more than 1,000 billion VND, but it had to wait until the "capital" increased to nearly 4,000 billion VND to start construction at the end of last December. Or with the Trung Luong - My Thuan Expressway project, after being officially put into operation, people in the West will have an additional 51 km of expressway, making travel between the Mekong Delta provinces and Ho Chi Minh City more convenient. However, the two banks of the Tien River are still not connected because the My Thuan 2 Bridge project has not been completed yet. If on schedule, the My Thuan 2 Bridge is expected to open to traffic by the end of this year.

It is not uncommon to see people walking or riding motorbikes onto the highway.

The highways are both insufficient and small, causing congestion. Highway accidents in Vietnam are also... strange. In mid-April, an accident on the HLD highway made public opinion "half-crying, half-laughing" because the story seemed so real. A car was running on the HLD highway access road, passing through An Phu Ward (Thu Duc City) when it suddenly hit... a cow running across. The cow got up and continued walking, while the car was severely damaged. Fortunately, there were no human casualties. The driver then had to drive off the highway and go to An Phu Ward Police to report the incident. This is a rare incident, but not the first time it has happened on the HLD highway. Previously, in September 2016, two buffaloes believed to have "lost their way" were hit by a car, killing them on the spot. The accident caused traffic congestion because the authorities had to block off part of the road, and a section of the barrier was damaged. At the same time, the dash cams of vehicles traveling on the Noi Bai - Son La highway also recorded many times the image of a driver driving at a speed of 70 - 80 km/h when suddenly encountering a herd of buffaloes leisurely crossing the road. For a long time, buffaloes have become a nightmare for drivers when traveling on the highway.

After cows and buffaloes, it's pedestrians and motorbikes. Nguyen Huu Vinh, a charity ambulance driver in My Tho City ( Tien Giang ), who transports patients to Ho Chi Minh City for emergency treatment every day, said that for the past two years, drivers traveling on the Ho Chi Minh City - Trung Luong Expressway have often encountered civilian vehicles driving into the emergency lane. Some drivers on the expressway even drive and... enjoy the scenery at a speed of 30 - 40 km/h. "While driving on the expressway, I keep seeing motorbikes, even having to avoid pedestrians crossing the main highway... With such a situation, how can there not be accidents? How can I dare to drive at high speed?", driver Vinh said.

Similarly, the Noi Bai - Lao Cai highway occasionally has traffic accidents involving pedestrians. Waiting for a bus is a daily sight in many areas on this highway. In addition to going on the highway to send goods or wait for a bus, some people living along the road also have the habit of using the highway as a place to walk every day. According to the highway management unit, reminders are still carried out regularly, but after that, everything goes back to normal. To facilitate travel, in some areas, people even build steps to get on and off the highway. Currently, there are still nearly 20 illegal pick-up and drop-off points of bus companies on this highway, which is more than 220 km long.

Need investment fund for highway development

Associate Professor Dr. Tran Chung, Chairman of the Vietnam Road Transport Construction Investors Association, pointed out that highways are created to ensure superior features for long-distance transportation and circulation by car, so that the time is shortened, convenient, safe and vehicles must run continuously at a superior speed than other routes. Vietnam has regulations guiding highways depending on the type and traffic conditions to limit the maximum speed according to 4 levels: 60 - 80 - 100 and 120 km/h. In which, levels 60 km/h and 80 km/h are often applied on routes with difficult terrain such as mountainous areas, high hills, limited technical conditions; complete highways in the plains will aim for levels 100 km/h and 120 km/h. With such a function, the project must also be designed with technical standards to satisfy such as two-way roads must have a hard median strip, no level crossings are allowed, no conflicts are created, vehicles can only enter/exit at permitted doors, not arbitrarily and absolutely must have protective fences, no motorbikes, pedestrians or cattle can circulate in.

Weak and inadequate infrastructure; chronic budget difficulties; socialized investment capital attracted to public-private projects (PPP) is rarely successful, so expressway projects are forced to be divided into investment phases or expanded, reducing efficiency while the construction costs are much higher than those of a single project. In addition, there are also reasons for limited planning vision, inaccurate forecasting capacity, inaccurate traffic volume assessment, and people's travel needs are higher than the original design.

Dr. Vu Anh Tuan, Director of the Vietnam-Germany Transport Research Center

"Current routes that do not meet such requirements cannot be called highways. It is also necessary to sympathize that in difficult economic circumstances, the Ministry of Transport implements a policy of investment phases calculated according to traffic volume and financial conditions. The problem is that exploitation according to phases often lasts longer than planned. For example, the Trung Luong - My Thuan highway, it is predicted that the completion phase must have 6 lanes, phase 1 will have 4 lanes first, but the next phase will be delayed by 10 years. With such an increase in traffic volume, it is impossible not to have congestion. At that time, the functions of the highway will not be guaranteed," Associate Professor, Dr. Tran Chung commented.

Associate Professor Dr. Vu Anh Tuan, Director of the Vietnam-Germany Transport Research Center, said that the planning of the expressway system in Vietnam currently exists, but it is built in the future, and when operating, it does not meet expressway standards, so the speed must be limited. Lack of capital is the biggest bottleneck leading to the current state of the substandard expressway system, with both a lack of lanes and many at-grade intersections (building overpasses and different-grade intersections will cost much more).

"To solve this problem, there is no other way but to adjust from macro policies, national regulatory policies in the direction of a breakthrough in creating resources for traffic infrastructure development. It is necessary to create an investment fund for highway development, taken from taxes and fees such as road use fees, environmental pollution fees, gasoline tax, etc. Along with that, thoroughly implement the TOD integrated traffic model to fully exploit the added value from land, creating a strategic infrastructure development fund for urban areas. This method helps highway projects to be completed quickly and evenly, creating a huge spillover effect on socio-economic development," Associate Professor, Dr. Vu Anh Tuan proposed.

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