Chaos in Vietnam

People wait for hours at bus stops in front of Suoi Tien Park. Traffic jams and overloaded public transportation were seen during recent holiday.

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With Liberation Day, April 30, falling on a Friday this year and followed the next day by May Day, most people in the country had at least three days off and chose to go on vacation or return home.

There was the usual chaos on the roads and bus stations as thousands stood in serpentine queues.

At HCM City’s Eastern Bus Station, counters issuing tickets to Vung Tau, Da Lat, and Phan Thiet were mobbed since early morning on Friday.

“I came to the station at 8am but I have not been able to buy a ticket to Vung Tau,” one passenger lamented at 11am.

By noon, transport operators announced all the seats had been sold out.

Phuong Trang Company said it sold out tickets to Da Lat and Quy Nhon by 10am, Thuan Thao Company to Quy Nhon by 11am, and Kumho Samco to Da Lat and Phan Thiet.

Many people waited on the streets to catch buses, holding up traffic for over an hour on National Highway 13 and the Ha Noi Highway on the outskirts of HCM City.

Nguyen Ngoc Thua, director of the Eastern Bus Station, said: “The bus that left on Thursday returned very late because of the traffic jams on National Highway 1A (the stretch in front of Suoi Tien Park) and Trang Bom District (Dong Nai Province). The station did not have enough buses on Friday morning.”

The station operated around 900 buses which picked up 20,000 passengers by noon but many more were still waiting at the station.

A similar situation also occurred at the Western Bus Station where thousands rushed out to catch buses on Kinh Duong Vuong Street.

Huynh Hai Oanh, deputy director of the station, said: “The station operated 40 more buses but even that could not meet demand.”

People remaining back in the city swarmed amusement spots like Suoi Tien Park and Dam Sen Park, clogging several bus routes.

Though the Public Passenger Transport Management and Operation Centre operated an additional 582 bus trips, they were not enough to meet demand, leaving passengers scrambling to catch buses.

A long line of people waited for tickets at the Cat Lai ferry station from 7am on Friday, and officials had to sell tickets on the streets to reduce the jams.

A rush to visit Can Gio District caused a similar overload at the Binh Khanh ferry station in the city’s Nha Be District.

Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta clogged

Since early morning on Friday, motorbikes and buses began to head from HCM City for the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta.

Traffic began to be stuck on the Trung Luong Expressway and on several stretches of a 50km highway in Tien Giang Province from 7am.

Many vehicles going to HCM City and Can Tho from Tra Vinh, Ben Tre and Tien Giang provinces on National Highway 60 got caught in the traffic jams at the Trung Luong crossroad.

Those that managed to escape and head to Can Tho were stuck at Kenh Xang Bridge.

The traffic police said there was a 3km queue of buses at the bridge on National Highway 1A.

It took buses half an hour to cross another bridge in Cai Lay Town in Tien Giang Province.

The same situation occurred at bridges of Phu Nhuan, Hoa Khanh and An Huu as well as An Thai Trung T-junction.

The roads cleared after My Thuan Bridge in Vinh Long Province but vehicles had to inch along a 30km stretch of National Highway 1A in the province because of a speed limit of 50km per hour in many places.

On average it took four hours to travel the 110km between Tien Giang and Can Tho.

Ha Noi traffic jams

Traffic was blocked at many entrances to Ha Noi including the Phap Van-Thanh Tri intersection on Highway No 1 because a massive number of vehicles were leaving the city.

It took buses three or four hours to traverse the 60km from Ha Noi to Phu Ly city.

Though bus stations like My Dinh, Nuoc Ngam and Bat Giap operated more buses, most passengers were gouged by operators.

There was a severe shortage of buses going to nearby places like Nam Dinh, Thai Binh, Thai Nguyen and Bac Kan provinces since many vehicles did not enter the station, instead picking up passengers outside to save time and to overcharge them.

Even luxury buses operated by VIP Hai Phuong on the Ha Noi-Yen Bai route did that.

Officials at Bat Giap Bus Station, one of the two biggest in Ha Noi, operated 50 additional buses to meet the demand for travel to Thanh Hoa Province.

Nguyen Tat Thanh, director of the station, said 1,100 buses transported 30,000 people between noon on Thursday and noon on Friday.