On the afternoon of January 16, at a regular press conference on the socio-economic situation of Ho Chi Minh City, Mr. Nguyen Thanh Loi - Deputy Head of the Traffic Safety Committee of Ho Chi Minh City said that the traffic order and safety situation in Ho Chi Minh City in the first days of 2025 recorded many positive changes in the awareness of traffic participants. However, traffic congestion is still a big challenge, especially during rush hour.
According to Mr. Loi, common traffic violations such as running red lights, climbing curbs, and not obeying traffic signals have decreased significantly. Data from January 1 to 14 shows that there were 31 traffic accidents in Ho Chi Minh City, killing 14 people and injuring 16. Compared to the previous period, the number of accidents decreased by 58% (42 cases less), the number of deaths decreased by 70% (1 person less) and the number of injuries decreased by 71% (40 people less).
Although public awareness has been raised after Decree 168 took effect, traffic jams still occur frequently on major routes and key areas, not only during rush hours but also during other time frames.
Mr. Nguyen Thanh Loi explained: "Good compliance with traffic regulations makes the flow of vehicles more orderly, leading to an increase in the density of vehicles concentrated on the roadway. Meanwhile, the city's traffic infrastructure, with limited road cross-section, has not been able to meet the demand."
Analyzing the cause of traffic jams, Mr. Loi said that the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee has directed specialized departments and localities to survey and assess the situation.
Thereby, Mr. Loi pointed out some reasons such as:
The demand for travel and freight transport increases at the end of the year. This is an annual rule;
Overloaded traffic infrastructure: With more than 10 million personal vehicles (more than 1 million cars and the rest are motorbikes) managed by Ho Chi Minh City, not to mention vehicles from other provinces and cities, while the capacity of the current traffic infrastructure is not enough.
Technical conditions for traffic regulation have not been improved in time: Some locations still have technical errors that affect traffic regulation.
Coordination in handling situations by authorities is sometimes not timely: There are still limitations that need to be overcome.
To solve this problem, Mr. Loi said, the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee has directed units to focus on reviewing, evaluating, and clearly identifying the causes and areas that need to apply measures to remove difficulties, creating favorable conditions for people to comply with Decree 168 while still ensuring smooth traffic.
At the same time, functional units are also required to immediately deploy solutions to overcome infrastructure shortcomings and technical problems.
One of the solutions that has been implemented is the installation of auxiliary lights to allow motorbikes to turn right at intersections with traffic lights. Through inspection, there are 435 intersections that need to install these lights, equivalent to 1,602 lights.
At the meeting on January 10, chaired by the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Transport, it was proposed to install about 1,969 lights, divided into 2 phases. Phase 1 will install about 500 lights and phase 2 will install the remaining lights. To date, 80 sets of lights have been installed at 38 intersections and will continue to be deployed in the coming time.
