The Ministry of Transport (MOT) has determined to standardize the national highway network and upgrade local roads to ensure connectivity between transport modes...
In the road network planning for the next 10 years, the MOT has determined to standardize the national highway network and upgrade local roads to ensure connectivity between transport modes...
Congested port access roads
Cat Lai Port is ranked among the top 30 largest seaports in the world, but the traffic system connecting to the port is severely overloaded, with traffic jams and congestion occurring frequently.
Mr. Phan Quang, a container truck owner, said: “Congestion results in a very low turnaround time for vehicles entering and leaving the port. On average, a regular truck makes 2 trips per day, while a container truck manages only 1.5 trips per day, which falls short of expectations given the costs businesses spend on investing in vehicles.”
Mr. Ha Ngoc Truong, Permanent Vice Chairman of the City Port and Bridge Association, stated that the sudden increase in vehicles leads to frequent congestion because it exceeds the traffic capacity of the roads connecting to the port.
“According to the planning, the road to the port was designed for only 12,000 vehicles per day and night, but so far the volume has increased to 26,000 vehicles entering and leaving the port through Mai Chi Tho, Vo Chi Cong, Nguyen Thi Dinh, and Dong Van Cong streets. If there are no solutions to expand and invest in more roads, traffic will be highly stressful in the coming time,” Mr. Truong noted.
Statistics from the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Transport show that in 2020 alone, there were 133 traffic jams on roads routing through the port.
Similarly, SSIT port (Cai Mep - Thi Vai port cluster, Ba Ria - Vung Tau province) is one of over 20 ports in the world capable of receiving container ships with a capacity of over 200,000 tons.
However, the only "gateway" route, National Highway 51 (QL51), is currently overloaded, despite being expanded about 10 years ago. The expressway connecting to Ho Chi Minh City, the HCMC - Long Thanh - Dau Giay Expressway, also frequently suffers from congestion.
The story of the Cai Mep - Thi Vai and Cat Lai port clusters reflects the common reality of seaports and waterways today. Evaluating the situation after nearly 10 years of implementing the road planning, a representative of the Transport Engineering Design Inc. (TEDI) stated that although the market share of road transport has decreased, it still dominates over other transport modes.
The reason is that poor road connection infrastructure heavily affects the restructuring of transport among different modes. Special seaports such as Lach Huyen and Cai Mep - Thi Vai currently lack connecting expressways as planned. Certain important traffic projects connecting to national routes, such as Ring Roads 4 and 5, have not yet received investment from Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.
With 24,000 km of national highways, the transport sector has recently prioritized expanding QL1 and investing in coastal routes. However, the scale and capacity of roads connecting seaports, airports, waterways, railway stations, and other focal hubs have not met operational requirements.
Connectivity between the national road network and other transport modes remains weak. The gateways to major cities and radial national highways are frequently congested.
According to the TEDI representative, besides inaccurate planning, the main reason is that investment resources only meet 40% of the demand. Furthermore, due to institutional bottlenecks, investment in national highway routes has failed to keep pace with the planning schedule.
Both local and central governments share the burden
To resolve this situation, in the road network planning for the 2021-2030 period, with a vision to 2045, the MOT has proposed numerous breakthrough solutions. These include standardizing the national highway system and upgrading key national highway routes connecting to major transport hubs—such as seaports, inland waterway ports, airports, and railway stations—that currently lack parallel expressways.
Branch roads connecting the national highway system with seaports and inland waterways currently managed by localities will be planned as national highways for maintenance investment, totaling 210 km.
In addition, 7,000 km of local roads will be upgraded to national highways, increasing the total standardized national highway length from the current 24,000 km to 32,000 km to enhance inter-regional connectivity. Notably, to ensure a smooth and seamless national highway system, this planning will transfer more than 2,000 km of national highways that fail to meet standards back into local roads.
Regarding road connections to airports, the planning addresses connections for airports with a capacity of under 30 million passengers per year, while combining urban railway forms for larger capacity airports and providing dedicated access road routes to each facility.
For seaports, especially Lach Huyen and Cai Mep - Thi Vai, there will be direct expressway connections. The remaining seaports will be connected via expressways and national highways; class 2 and 3 seaports, inland waterway ports, and extra-urban railway stations will also be linked to the national highway system.
The consulting unit representative assessed that branch routes connecting national highways to seaports and inland waterways are mostly managed by localities. Because decentralized management is unclear, they have not received investment for upgrading, expansion, and maintenance, resulting in narrow roads prone to congestion.
“For ports that do not have direct national highway connections, the MOT proposes planning branch connections to the national highway system to increase connectivity among transport modes, helping to reduce logistics costs. According to the forecast scenario, when fully implemented as planned, well-connected national highway routes will help decrease the road transport market share while increasing the market share of other transport modes,” the TEDI representative stated.
Speaking with Giao Thong (Transport) Newspaper, Mr. Nguyen Van Huyen, General Director of the Directorate for Roads of Vietnam, explained that the new road planning was developed based on overcoming shortcomings in connectivity and the transport market, as well as addressing future traffic volume forecasts. It focuses on prioritizing the upgrade, renovation, and traffic safety enhancement of national highway routes that currently fail to meet transport demand.
“The process of upgrading local roads to national highways or transferring national highways to local roads has been thoroughly reviewed to ensure both horizontal and vertical connectivity. Road connections with the four other sectors have also been carefully examined to guarantee feasibility,” Mr. Huyen said.
To meet the road transport and connectivity demands by 2030, the planning estimates a need for nearly 1.1 million billion VND for investment in both expressways and national highways. Meanwhile, actual budget allocations and mobilized investments during the 2011-2020 period only reached about 573 trillion VND.
Discussing the investment mechanism for branch roads connecting national highways to seaports and standardizing the national highway system, the TEDI representative noted that after balancing resources to invest in 5,000 km of expressways, the remaining funds for building standard national highways are limited.
“Recently, many localities wanted to utilize their own budgets to improve transport infrastructure but were hindered by the State Budget Law, making it impossible to execute. To properly allocate resources, the road planning proposed a mechanism where both the Central and local governments jointly invest in expressways and national highways,” the TEDI representative noted.
Mr. Nguyen Xuan Cuong, Deputy General Director of the Directorate for Roads of Vietnam, stated that existing national highway routes already included in the planning are the investment responsibility of the central government.
National highway routes included in the planning but not yet invested in fall under the responsibility of localities. For example, a local road intersecting QL1 but connecting to the coast will be designated as a national highway in the planning. In the immediate future, these routes will receive investment from the locality, which will subsequently complete the procedures to transfer them to central government management as national highways.
“The road planning introduces an open mechanism; when investing in a national highway route, a locality can utilize local capital, or the central government can invest. Alternatively, both the local and central governments can co-invest. During the upcoming amendment to the Road Traffic Law, the MOT will include this mechanism in the draft Law to serve as a legal foundation for implementation,” Mr. Cuong stated.
Source: https://www.baogiaothong.vn/nhung-dot-pha-moi-quy-hoach-duong-bo-mo-duong-ket-noi-cang-bien-d502051.html