The HCMC Department of Transport expects a smart transport operation center to be in place in 2020 to integrate all traffic monitoring equipment and transport infrastructure management facilities to better manage traffic in the city.

Motorcycles and cars are stuck in a traffic jam in HCMC. A smart transport operation center is expected to be ready in the city in 2020 to help reduce traffic jams and accidents

The department said at a meeting on Tuesday that an integrated traffic monitoring and control center will be ready in 2016-2017 based on available infrastructure. The center will also provide information about traffic and support for a better handling of violations, and help reduce traffic congestion and accidents.

In 2020, the smart transport operation center will be set up to manage urban traffic with the support of an intelligent traffic system (ITS) platform.

ITS service providers and transport experts suggested solutions for the city to develop the smart traffic operation center at the meeting, which was jointly organized by the transport department and the University of Transport.

At the meeting, the department pointed out problems with the application of information technology (IT) to the city’s transport sector, such as the lack of data synchronization, coordination between relevant agencies, and quality human resources to operate the ITS.

The department proposed stages to develop the operation center based on models and experiences of advanced countries like Singapore and South Korea. In the first stage, the traffic monitoring and control center will be set up based on the premises of the existing traffic management center for the Saigon River Tunnel, which links districts 1 and 2.

Tran Viet Yen from the University of Transport said that ITS in Vietnam still concentrates on traffic management and support for traffic violation handlings while the most important part of it is traffic organization. To successfully deploy the system, strong coordination between relevant agencies and traffic police is required.

Experts said ITS has been partly applied in the city. However, it is difficult to make the most of it and the existing transport infrastructure due to weak coordination among the city’s departments of transport, police and information-communications.