According to the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Construction, the Ho Chi Minh City area (formerly) still has 22 points at risk of traffic congestion.
In the Binh Duong area (formerly), congestion often occurred on key traffic routes such as National Highway 13, My Phuoc - Tan Van road, DT.743, DT.747, especially in areas concentrated with many industrial zones and clusters.
In the Ba Ria - Vung Tau area (formerly), during holidays, Tet and long holidays, many roads often experience localized congestion, especially National Highway 51.
After merging with Binh Duong and Ba Ria - Vung Tau, Ho Chi Minh City currently manages more than 12.7 million vehicles, including more than 1.4 million cars and about 11.3 million motorbikes.
The rapid increase of personal vehicles is creating great pressure on the urban transport infrastructure system, which is already overloaded.
The demand for parking in the central area is very large, while the system of underground, above-ground and multi-story parking lots is seriously lacking. Occupying sidewalks and roads for parking is common, narrowing the road surface and increasing the risk of traffic jams.
In addition, urban planning still has many inadequacies. The land ratio for transportation and public works has not met development requirements.
With a focused urban structure, most of the high-quality jobs along with a system of large universities, end-line hospitals, financial - commercial, administrative centers and industrial parks, export processing zones (such as Tan Thuan) are concentrated in the urban core.
This forces people from the suburbs to move to the city center every day, increasing traffic congestion.
The congestion situation is even more serious due to the construction barricades of a series of key traffic projects such as An Phu, My Thuy intersections, Tan Van intersection belonging to Ring Road 3 HCMC,...
According to the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Construction, to reduce congestion, regarding project solutions, in the period 2025 - 2030, Ho Chi Minh City prioritizes investing in 77 projects with a total capital of nearly 1.8 million billion VND.
Many key projects are expected to be completed in the period 2026 - 2028 such as Ring Road 3, Ring Road 2, Ho Chi Minh City - Moc Bai expressway, Ho Chi Minh City - Thu Dau Mot - Chon Thanh expressway,...
For urban railways, Ho Chi Minh City prioritizes investing in 6 important metro lines by 2030, including: Metro Line 2 (Ben Thanh - Tham Luong section); Metro Line 2 (Ben Thanh - Thu Thiem section); Metro Line Ben Thanh - Can Gio; Metro Line New City Binh Duong - Suoi Tien; Metro Line Thu Dau Mot - Ho Chi Minh City; Thu Thiem - Long Thanh route; Metro Line 6 (phase 1).
At the same time, Ho Chi Minh City promotes the application of technology in traffic management, expands traffic control models according to networks, invests in upgrading intelligent traffic monitoring and control centers, and installs more surveillance camera systems with integrated artificial intelligence (AI) to handle violations.
In the long term, Ho Chi Minh City will adjust urban planning in the direction of equitable, distributed development, reducing pressure on the central area.
In which, researching the relocation of schools, hospitals and industrial parks out of the urban core is considered an important and sustainable solution to solve the traffic congestion problem.
