The HCMC Department of Transport is weighing using text messaging as one of several emergency measures for dealing with chronic traffic congestion.

Speaking at a recent meeting with departments and district authorities, city chairman Nguyen Thanh Phong threw his support behind the text messaging scheme, saying the transport, and information-communication departments, and the traffic police should study ways to send text messages to road users to inform them of traffic jams, and recommend alternative routes.

Bui Xuan Cuong, director of the Department of Transport, said that for short-term solutions, the department will find ways to improve traffic regulation and arrange parking areas in the central business district.

Starting from next year, the department will launch a website where road users can get updates on traffic infrastructure and conditions in the city; see a traffic map with recommended routes without traffic jams; and find parking lots, hospitals, gas stations and public restrooms.

In the center of the city, the department will consider a plan to charge cars parked on the streets and carry out a project to collect fees from automobiles entering the downtown area in a bid to limit vehicle traffic, he said.

The department will work with the traffic police to regulate traffic at 37 congestion-prone sites, and finish work on an overpass at Go May Intersection in Binh Tan District and another at Go Vap Roundabout in Go Vap District before Tet (Lunar New Year), which falls in late January, he added.

Nguyen Ngoc Tuong, deputy head of the HCMC Traffic Safety Committee, said a reason behind traffic congestion in the city is a lot of fencing around road excavation projects, which usually mushroom in the final months of year.

Road excavation work should be done between March and August, when there is little or no rain in the city and students are on summer vacation.

In response, Cuong said the transport department would consider reducing the licensing of projects that would be implemented in the lead up to Tet.

The city’s vice chairman Le Van Khoa said Cuong’s department should speed up work on 34 traffic infrastructure projects to reduce traffic jams next year, including building new Mien Dong and Mien Tay coach stations.

SGT