Individual transport means account for more than 90%, particularly the number of motorcycle is on a continuous increase by some 2 million units at present and it is in a danger of escaping from the control of the Government.
These above-mentioned issues have caused serious degrade of urban civilization, living environment and traffic safety. Together with economic development, freight transport volume is getting more and more increased, especially the heavy transport means (containers) while bridge and road network is insufficient, weak, narrow and not integrated. Traffic signing system is too far from obsolete and inadequate. These lead to a remarkable decline in traffic speed, recurrent traffic congestion and seriously polluted environment.
In 1998, the whole city managed 1,215 roads with total length of 1520.0kms and road density of about 0.727km/km2. Three major areas divided the road network. Total residents was estimated about 7 millions whereas total area of the road network is just 6 million m2 and accordingly the average density of less than 1m2/person.
In the existing metropolitan area, total road length has increased by 1.05 times in a comparison with that in 1975 whereas the population has increased by 1.5 times over 1975. The five developed urban districts take features of suburb area and road density compared with this region area is 1/6 time of the existing urban area. A plan for population resettlement into suburb area for mitigating the overloaded situation of the existing urban area is faced with great difficulties due to insufficient infrastructure.
There are 313 bridges of 16,486 long meters throughout the city. Of which the number of bridges below 10 tons accounts for 50%. General speaking, in terms of capacity and size, most bridges cannot satisfy transport demand. The number of bridges built more than 50 years reaches 50%; a lot of bridges cannot ensure the clearance obstructs inland water transport. Moreover, many of them lack of breakaway support system.
There are 1,276 intersections in the city including 744 T-junctions, 480 crossroads, 15 five-way crossroads, 2 six-way crossroads, 1 seven-way crossroads, 25 roundabouts and 9 construction sites. All the intersections are in grade-separated level. The intersections in urban areas suffer from heavy traffic volume that tends to cause traffic congestion. Due to the mixture of various transport means, especially on the North-South railway line to Hoa Hung station that is in grade-separated level with many major trunk roads of the city, the traffic capacity and utilization efficiency of traffic facilities has decreased.
The gateways are limited and impassable for traffic and the intersections on highways and ring roads in grade-separated level with urban transport are also the important reasons causing the constraints of traffic capacity at the gateways in/out the city.
