Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh has just signed Official Dispatch No. 16/CD-TTg on strengthening the assurance of traffic order and safety to serve the people during the Binh Ngo Lunar New Year holiday 2026.
Notably, the Prime Minister requested the Ministry of Construction, People's Committees of localities and related units to study reasonable traffic organization plans to reduce the risk of congestion, especially at toll stations, expressways, and intersections connecting major urban gateways, in order to serve people participating in traffic conveniently and safely; not to let prolonged traffic congestion occur on roads to the center of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.
The Binh Ngo Lunar New Year 2026 holiday recorded a noteworthy positive result: traffic accidents decreased sharply in all three criteria compared to the previous year.
These figures reflect the drastic involvement of functional forces, especially the strict handling of violations of alcohol concentration, speed, and vehicle load. When the law is strictly enforced, the effectiveness is clearly measured.
But reducing accidents is only half the story. The other half is to ensure that the flow of people returning to work after Tet is smooth, orderly and safe.
The gateway to urban areas in the last days of the Tet holiday is always a unique "hot spot". It gathers all kinds of movements, from spring travelers returning, workers returning from their hometowns to industrial parks, students returning to enroll, to freelancers returning to the city to earn a living.
If traffic organization is not reasonable, prolonged congestion, fatigue, frustration and safety risks will fall on all traffic participants.
Images of crowded passenger cars, suitcases stacked high in the passenger compartment, even carrying motorbikes in a space that was originally only for carrying people; or the scene of families waiting for hours in the rain without catching the next flight... in the days after Tet in many localities show that the passenger transport problem during peak season still has many gaps that need to be reasonably calculated to "fill" - both short-term and long-term.
After Tet, the flow of people flocking to the cities is the flow of production. Each worker present on time, each trip to a safe place is a link for the economy to operate smoothly and on schedule.
If that flow is blocked by prolonged congestion or disorder in passenger transport, the damage is not only calculated in waiting hours but also in social costs and people's trust.
Keeping urban gateways clear, organizing flexible routes, regulating lanes reasonably, strictly controlling passenger transport... also shows that local authorities have shown substantive management capacity, and at the same time expressed concern and respect for the people's livelihood journey.
Traffic safety today is not only about sharply reducing traffic accidents in all criteria, but also about ensuring that workers can return to work safely, civilizedly and protected.
