2. Record of the Seminar
2.1. Opening Ceremony
2.1.1. Welcome Remarks by Mr.Nguyen Viet Tien, Vice Minister of Transport
On behalf of the leaders of the MOT, on the occasion of opening the Seminar I would like to extend a warm welcome to all the participants in this Seminar.
HCMC has a very important location for the economic development of the country. It is also the biggest industrial, technical and scientific as well as service, financial and trade centers, the favorable transport linkage for exchanging activities in the South, the country and the world. With the population of 5 millions at present and about 9-10 millions by 2010-2020, HCMC is the city with the largest population scale in Vietnam.
Over the past years, the City has had a lot of great efforts to improve urban transport situation. However, the transport system is faced with the overload due to the rapid increase in terms of travel demand and the low technical and qualified transport network as well as the lack of system of integrated transport trunk routes, obsolete and old transport means and small land fund for transport.
Particularly, public transport has decreased to an excessively low rate and it can meet only about 2-3% of daily travel demand of people while the individual transport means such as motorcycles and passenger cars increase rapidly.
This situation has led to the increase in urban air pollution, traffic congestion and at present traffic accident in the city.
Over the past years, the MOT has had the guidelines and directions to carry out the studies and projects on mass transit development in HCMC. Some of them are ongoing. At present and in the coming years, the guideline of the MOT is to try further to seek the effective solutions for urban transport network, especially pay special attention to the public transport development in HCMC, the superurban area in the region and the whole country.
The objectives of this Seminar are: Generalization of the currently difficult situation of urban transport of HCMC, presentation of experiences of international urban centers, especially the experiences of Japan, formulation of follow up plans of HCMC for mass transit development including bus routes, particularly the metro system in urban area with the aim of preparing for feasibility study step of the first metro lines of HCMC with the assistance given by the Japanese Government and experts.
The MOT supports and highly appreciates the efforts in cooperation between the TEDI South and JTCA to hold this Seminar. The MOT hopes to receive precious opinions contributed by the participants in this Seminar for the HCMC mass transit development. Over the past years, Japanese Government as well as Japanese experts and companies have given the precious assistance to the transport development and construction of Vietnam.
