Ladies and Gentlemen,

In HCMC, we are executing HOUSTRANS project on behalf of TDSI to be the major counterpart, together with HCMC People's Committee and JICA completing HOUSTRANS project. The project commenced from August 27, 2002 and to date, it has been done for nearly 6 months. We have carried out a survey campaign, this can be called "campaign" as we see that the scopes of the surveys are much larger than any other surveys that we have done. And after 3 months, we have cooperated with JICA Study Team to finish totally 13 surveys and the biggest survey among them which requires the participation of 5 agencies including universities in HCMC and other small consultancies is interviewing 28,000 households in HCMC. So far, all surveys have been completed and we are now working with the experts to analyze and process the surveys' data. And at today's seminar, I would like to speak about some urban transport problems and issues facing HCMC.

I will firstly speak briefly about HCMC's characteristics so that you can see the differences as well as the similarities of HCMC as compared to Ha Noi. Traffic congestion situation is similar in HCMC and Ha Noi, but seriousness of traffic congestion in HCMC will be much higher. Regarding population, Ha Noi's population is about 3 million while that of HCMC is around 7 million, thus the distance in HCMC from this end of the city to the other end can be 2 or 3 times further than Ha Noi. Such contexts have created more difficulties and problems for HCMC. About bus subsidy, HCMC is providing big subsidies for buses and bus fare on model routes is only VND1,000 while that of Ha Noi is VND2,500. Meanwhile, number of passengers per day in Ha Noi is 80,000, same as HCMC's. This is obviously a difficulty of HCMC. As you can see, HCMC's population is almost double Ha Noi's. And about per capital income, HCMC is the area with highest income in the country and of course higher than Ha Noi. So how will this be reflected in the comparison of urban transport in HCMC?

HCMC has 12 center districts, 5 inner districts and 5 outer districts with official population in 2002 of 5.3 plus about 1.7 visitors. Regarding population density, the districts with highest population are center ones while 5 outer districts have lowest population density.

About motorization, according to motorcycle statistics, HCMC currently has 2 million motorcycles, so the ratio as per official population is 1:2. Such ratio show that motorcycles in HCMC is a really knotty problem. Meanwhile, cars ownership haven't increased significantly but in the future, car increase in HCMC will be faster than Ha Noi as in Ha Noi, few people are capable of having garage at home, while on the contrary, the number is much higher in HCMC. This is only a condition, but supposed that in the future, the Government issues a decision requiring registers of car must have garage at home, HCMC will be easier satisfying such requirement. And from the table, we can see that the number of households owning both motorcycles and bicycles is ever increasing as people's living conditions are more and more improved. Thus motorization of the city people is more and more increasing. And we can also see that 50% of the households owning more than two motorcycles. According to traveling demand forecast in 2003 of 11.3 million of trips/day, as we see here, growth rate of bicycle has slowed down while that of motorcycles is increasing, we can have an idea of how motorcycles have overspread HCMC. And 61% of the people own private vehicles, of which 45.5% own motorcycles. And the number of public transport users is insignificant, as so far, HCMC has 84 bus routes but transported amount is only 80,000 of passengers/day, while Ha Noi, with 3 million people, has already got 100,000 of bus passengers/day. With the population as much as a half of HCMC, Ha Noi has got more bus passengers than HCMC, and from this, we know that HCMC's problem is more serious than that of Ha Noi in maintenance and development of public transport.

This table also shows that motorcycle is the major mode of transport in HCMC as even the low income earners owns motorcycles and mobility gap between the poor and the rich in the city is not very big, similar to Ha Noi. But average travel distance is not 4 km as in Ha Noi but further, about 7-8 km. and this means that public passenger transport is very potential in ensuring such travel distance for the people as the distance is only about 8 km. A second characteristic in HCMC which I think similar to Ha Noi is that women are more constrained in motorcycles ownership and use and school children are dependent on others' help regarding mobility to schools. These are potential market for our public passenger transport's development. And also from the survey, we see that people favor the Government's public passenger transport. People want the Government to have appropriate decision to develop public passenger transport.

Although at the moment, share of public transport service is still low, not many people assess buses as "very bad", making bus service intolerable to people. The chart describes people's concern on transport services so that we can have appropriate suggestions in later stages of the project. And the issues that are most concerned by the people are squared one, meaning traffic safety, roads and facilities, traffic enforcement and travel conditions and traffic control measures. Others services are not urgent concerns of the people. We want such services to be further improved; however, city residents still find their existing quality acceptable. Thus, they would be very happy if such service be improved even only a little, as the case in Ha Noi, only with little improvement and better vehicles, people are much more interested in public transport.

Traffic safety is people's top concern. Meanwhile contribution to traffic congestion is not much. However, if we do not develop public transport, traffic congestion will one day be congestion of cars as travel demand of the people will be increasing and people's higher income will give rise to demand of private cars and this is a potential danger if HCMC do not have a good study and solution, this will paralyze traffic activities in HCMC.

A second issue of serious concern is traffic accidents. Daily level of accidents in HCMC is even more worrisome than that of Ha Noi and accident rate is higher year after year and this issue has drawn special attention of Government, MOT, People's Committee of Ha Noi and HCMC. Accident statistics show that accident occurs mostly not in work hours but during weekends and at night - after 7 pm, which is leisure time. Worst hours are after 8 pm with peak is from 9-11PM. Major causes of traffic accidents are violations of traffic law, including over speeding and lack of control of speed, for example drunk driving and encroaching on opposing lane, weak enforcement of traffic law, low awareness level of road safety, poor design of intersections, inadequate traffic signal control and lack of accident database, etc.

About future transport policy directions, HOUSTRANS experts see that the most decisive condition is control of motorcycles ownership and use, and people's support in this transport policy is required. And from the surveys, we see that people largely agree with the issue when the Government launches important decisions concerning motorbike control in Ha Noi and HCMC. And from the reasons, people's concerns as well as HCMC's practical conditions, we understand that directions for public transport development should be based the view point of safety and organized traffic flow, thus there should be regulations on motorcycle use. And from economic viewpoint, there should be control of car development in the future since this is a big potential threat to future traffic congestion. And from these bases, bus should be expanded efficiently, this is a problem for HOUSTRANS experts and us to solve during the remaining time of the project.

These are some sketches of what we have done in HOUSTRANS project and what do we think about present situation of public transport in HCMC as we as some comparisons with Ha Noi. HCMC would encounter big transport problems if it fails to address its urban transport issues properly. And this is largely dependent on the suggestions and countermeasures to be proposed in this project as well as from other researchers and decisions of our city and Government leaders. Thank you for listening.