VietNamNet Bridge – With a view to strengthening traffic control and easing congestion, Ho Chi Minh City authorities have asked the government for permission to develop a large project for a center for traffic control.

This file photo show a traffic disorder at a crossroads in District 7, HCMC due to the traffic signal system being out of order (Photo: Tuoi Tre)

“We have prepared a detailed construction plan for the project, which costs about US$187 million, mostly from ODA loans from the French Government,” Thang said.

When the government puts the project onto the list calling for French ODA, city authorities will negotiate with competent French agencies to get loans and will earmark $17 million from its budget as counterpart capital for the project.

Contractors for the project will be selected through public biddings, he said.

According to the project, the number of crossroads with traffic signals will be increased from the current 590 to 1,500, and at each of them two cameras will be installed to monitor traffic.

Electronic displays will also be fixed at the city’s gateways and on major routes to record and inform the public of real-time traffic situations.

The center will be linked with the other traffic management systems, including the traffic signal control center, bus management system, electronic system for toll collection, and the traffic safety control system.

This center will also be connected with the Saigon tunnel management center, the HCMC-Trung Luong expressway and the HCMC-Long Thanh-Dau Giay expressway.

The project will involve three phases, with the first two years intended for surveys, designs and equipment installation on 400 crossroads, and the four remaining years for the work on 1,100 other crossroads.

Work on the project will first be made in inner districts 1, 2, 3, 5 and 10 and then in all other districts of the city.

The traffic center will require 150 staff members, of whom 20 will be traffic regulators and the rest technicians, maintainers and repairers.

Once put into operation, the center will have three basic functions, Thang said.

First, it will be able to provide exact statistics about the traffic flow and traffic situation in the city, contributing to improving traffic arrangement and management.

Secondly, with the increased number of traffic signals systems, the center will enable traffic managers to better adjust the operation of these systems, for example, by prolonging or shortening the stop-time (red light) at each crossroads depending on the actual traffic observed at each area.

In addition, with the data from the electronic displays, traffic regulators can warn travelers about which streets are congested so that they can choose another route.

Finally, the center will help strengthen compliance with traffic rules among drivers, since through the installed cameras traffic police officers can identify the number plates of violators’ vehicles as a basic for imposing a fine of them.

The project is a breakthrough solution that will help alleviate congestion in the city in the years to come, Thang said.

Old lesson

While tt is necessary to build such a center, the project’s developers should learn the old lessons in relation to the installation of traffic signal systems, said Dr Khuat Viet Hung from the Transport University.

It will be a huge waste to buy equipment and accessories that cannot be integrated properly into an overall system because of their different technical characteristics and parameters, as has happened in the past, he said.

Equipment and facilities should belong to the same or similar technical standard systems so that can be connected with each other and with other traffic control systems.

They should also be able to be upgraded or expanded, he added.

A lesson can be learned from 1998, when the city planned to install 121 traffic signal systems worth US$3.5 million, as part of the city’s traffic management improvement project valued at $20.7-million, most of which came from World Bank loans.

The installation was carried out tardily and inspectors later found that many signal sets were replaced with others after a short time of use, that a lot of detectors for traffic volume were out of order, and that a number of traffic signal systems did not work as well as expected.

VietNamNet/Tuoi Tre