Nguyen Hoang Hai, director of the Hanoi Urban Transport Management and Operation Center, told VnExpress: “It would be ideal if the lanes could be earmarked exclusively for buses 100 percent of the time, but I don’t think it’s necessary. We are considering reserving the lanes by the hour and only in certain places.”

Hai was referring to the proposal to create bus-only lanes to increase the rate of commuters using public transport to 25 percent by 2020.

“If traffic is not too heavy, vehicles can share the lane. But buses must get priority during rush hour.”

While public transport is cheap and could carry a large number of passengers, it could interfere with other vehicles on the road, like when buses have to stop at bus stops to pick up passengers, he said.

“When there are exclusive bus lanes, picking up and letting off passengers would cause no interference.”

To determine which lanes would be chosen, the city transport department would need to analyze the infrastructure and vehicle density, Hai said.

Asked about some people’s doubts whether exclusive bus lanes would work since rapid transit buses (BRT) occasionally get stuck in their own exclusive lanes, Hai blamed the BRT problem on poor management and lack of clear regulations.

But BRT is faster and less likely to see accidents, he pointed out.

“I believe that exclusive bus lanes are necessary. The return on investment depends on the transport and other sectors’ management and, especially, the public’s attitude.”

Asked about some people saying it might be hasty to have exclusive bus lanes by 2020 since the city’s infrastructure would be incapable of supporting them, leading to more traffic congestion, Hai said with much analysis still to be done it is too early to make such a claim.

“Hanoi’s traffic [plans are] being completed step by step, and the city will not designate bus lanes indiscriminately. We will only choose roads with high bus density and traffic needs.”

The right time to do so would be after the Cat Linh-Ha Dong railroad begins operation, he said. With exclusive bus lanes, buses would integrate well with railway stations, and users would be pleased, he added.

“If we leave the situation as it is… we would never be able to eliminate traffic congestion in the city.”

Hanoi needs to determine the efficacy of exclusive bus lanes before actually creating them, Ho Quoc Chinh, a transport lecturer of the University of Sydney, has said.

For this, a set of concrete performance indicators needs to be created to determine the effectiveness of a bus system before deploying it, Chinh said.

The city currently has only one lane reserved for public buses, between Long Bien bus station and the intersection of Thanh Nien, Nghi Tam and Yen Phu streets, and a bus rapid transit route between Kim Ma in Ba Dinh District and Yen Nghia in Ha Dong District.

Hanoi’s 2,000 buses carry around 1.2 million passengers every day, accounting for 12 percent of all commuters.

The department said that the ground beneath three expressways running through the city are left unused.

It has suggested to the Ministry of Transport that temporary roads are built underneath a two-kilometer section of the HCMC-Long Thanh-Dau Giay Expressway, which connects the southern metropolis with Dong Nai Province and Vung Tau beach town.

Parking lots should take up the space underneath the others, which are HCMC-Trung Luong Expressway that connects the city with the Mekong Delta and Ben Luc-Long Thanh that connects the city to its west and east.

The temporary roads should only be used by small vehicles, as bigger ones like trucks or containers running on them could ruin the expressway’s structure, officials said.

The area of land reserved for traffic in HCMC is among the lowest in Vietnam, especially when it comes to space for parking, according to the city’s transport department. It is also one of the reasons why traffic congestion is worsening, hence new solutions just as the one just suggested are needed, it said.

Vietnam’s largest metropolis with 13 million people is frequently plagued by traffic jams. The city has around 7.8 million motorbikes and about 750,000 cars.

Parking space in the city downtown now only meets around 7 percent of total demand, according to urban planning experts. Several parking lot projects have remained on paper for years.

“Without intervention, traffic congestion in the downtown area will get more serious,” said Ngo Hai Duong, head of the road infrastructure development unit under the transport department.

The department said that the city is considering charging downtown tolls for cars as part of efforts to improve the situation, but this measure will not be implemented before 2021.

The work would be carried out at night so that flights are not affected, Nguyen Huy Duong, deputy director of the airport, said.

S3 was temporarily closed on August 9 on safety grounds, but was partially reopenedon August 19, Noi Bai authorities said.

A section of the runway 1B also needs repairs, and so will only be used between 1 a.m. and 7 a.m. between September 11 and 13.

Potholes of up to a meter and cracks of 30-50 centimeters were found on the runway this month, the authorities said.

Work on the six-lane Cat Lai Bridge, which will stretch 3.8 kilometers, is expected to start next year.

Residents today take the Cat Lai ferry to travel between District 2, HCMC, and Nhon Trach District in Dong Nai, but the ferry can no longer accommodate current travel needs.

Traffic on the highway that connects HCMC with the districts of Long Thanh and Dau Giay in Dong Nai Province is also exceeding its capacity.

Dong Nai hopes the Cat Lai Bridge will help turn Nhon Trach District into an extension of HCMC suburbs.

HCMC will handle the section of the road, 623 meters long in District 2, that will lead to the bridge, as a build-transfer (BT) project.

The main part of the bridge, of 650 meters, is set to be a build-operate-transfer (BOT) project executed by Dong Nai. If this doesn’t work out, the province will incorporate a build-transfer (BT) project. The southern province will also be in charge of the second section of the 263m long road in Nhon Trach that leads to the bridge.

The center will first build models to predict future socio-economic patterns for the southern metropolis until 2025, with a vision until 2030, said Tran Hoang Ngan, director of the HCMC Institute for Development Studies.

These predictions would not only help HCMC address problems issues like flooding or traffic congestion, but also promote confidence among foreign investors, said the city Party Secretary Nguyen Thien Nhan.

“The cost to run the center is insignificant as it requires little infrastructure. Instead, it mostly requires brainpower,” he said.

The center should come up with a model for the city’s short term (three to five years) and long term (10 years) development. By October, it should be able to simulate one for HCMC’s economy in 2020, he added.

As Vietnam’s most populated city and with the largest-scaled economy, HCMC serves as the engine to drive the whole country forward, said Nhan. As such, becoming a smart city (by using artificial intelligence) would help that engine speed up and avoid future mistakes, he added.

In 2017 the southern metropolis began implementing a plan to transform itself into a smart city by 2020.

The goal of this ambitious plan is to use scientific advances to resolve the problems the city faces, including rapid population growth, unsustainable economic growth, inadequate forecasting, planning and management, poor healthcare, education and transport, pollution, and inefficient public administration.

The four pillars of the plan are the construction of a smart city operation center, a public database, a socio-economic simulation center and a cyber security center.

The city also began studying the use of artificial intelligence to help with this goal.

As an economic hub with more than 10 million residents, HCMC has everything needed to set up a center for studying and applying AI, Nhan had said at a scientific conference last March.