VietNamNet Bridge – In Vietnam’s metropolises like Hanoi and HCM City, even if you drive a super-car, your speed cannot exceed 40km per hour and your car will have to inch in traffic jams or floods.

At a recent workshop, an official from the National Traffic Safety Committee cited World Bank research to show that transport costs in Vietnam account for 11.8% of GDP, compared to less than 4.5% in the US, 4.8% in Singapore, 5.8% in the EU, and 6% in Japan. Thus, the cost of travel and transportation in Vietnam is the highest in the world.

All cats are grey in the dark

It is a waste for using a super-car in this situation.

An entrepreneur in HCM City recently bought a VND1.6 billion ($800,000) car, which has maximum speed beyond 200 km/h. However, on the first day he drove the car, he was very disappointed seeing his super-car inching forwards together with bicycles and motorcycles in traffic congestion. Traffic jams took him two hours just to go through a distance of over 10km.

However, this rich man is not the sole victim of traffic congestion in Vietnam. Previously Vietnamese paid millions of US dollars to buy supercars, including a Bugatti Veyron ($1.4 million), which has a maximum speed of 407 km/h.

In the current traffic situation in Vietnam, such supercars are only for marching during special cases or staying in garages as part of car collections of rich people.

Losses caused by traffic jams

According to a seminar on sustainable urban development held recently in HCM City on September 15, annual losses due to traffic congestion in the city was estimated at about VND23 trillion, equivalent to $1.2 billion.

Currently the total surface area for traffic in HCM City accounts for 1.7% to 2% of the total urban land, so the figure may keep rising.

However, the costs of travel and transport in Vietnam are high, not only from traffic jams but from many other reasons. Nguyen Van Thanh, Chair of the Vietnam Automotive Transport Association, said besides official costs such as fuel, labor, vehicle depreciation, the cost of transportation in Vietnam is because transport service providers have to "bear the huge cost that they cannot reveal."

What are they? They are bribes for traffic police, for poor-quality roads, for prolonged road projects or for poor transport management?

Hanoi once spent VND1 trillion ($50 million) for clearance and construction of a 500m road in Dong Da district, which is considered the most expensive road in the planet. Sadly, as soon as the road opened for traffic, traffic jams still occurred because of bottlenecks.

Similarly, Chu Van An Road in Binh Thanh District, Ho Chi Minh City was described by a local newspaper as a road with "big head and thin bottom" because this four-lane, 20m wide road has a bottleneck of only 4-5m wide.

There are many transport projects that have not been finished after several years to become traffic hindrance.

Vietnam can learn from developed countries to invest in and manage traffic infrastructure to significantly reduce the cost of transportation and travel, to create a strong impetus for economic growth. South Korea, Japan, and Singapore are good examples in Asia.

Even Southeast Asian countries like Cambodia and Myanmar are improving in this matter. The quality of roads in Cambodia and quality of airports in Myanmar is now a challenge for Vietnam.

If Vietnam does not change, the expensive transport and travel costs will be a major constraint to economic development in the country.

Nguyen Anh Thi