The Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee has unveiled its plan to incorporate 12- to 17-seater minibuses into its public transport system in a proposal submitted to Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc. It is expected to help turn more motorbike drivers to public commuting, which would in turn alleviates the pressure on Ho Chi Minh City’s overloaded urban transport. In the proposal, the People’s Committee stated that bus route coverage in urban Ho Chi Minh City only fared 1km/sqkm, which is much lower than the standard of 2.5 km/sqkm. The city’s bus fleet consists of 2,322 vehicles on 137 routes, the majority of which are 41-60 seaters designed to operate on streets at least 10 meters wide. However, among the city’s nearly 5,000 streets, 3,450 are less than seven meters wide, which makes it impossible for the majority of public buses to reach. This is also considered the underpinning of the sub-par bus coverage in Ho Chi Minh, which put off many potential customers as they have to travel great lengths to use the bus system. Considering the situation, the introduction of light buses is essential for Ho Chi Minh City’s smart city initiative, according to the proposal. In its bid to solve the issue, the proposal envisions 20 new minibus routes to connect areas of the city with the forthcoming metro line No. 1, which runs from Ben Thanh Market in District 1 to Suoi Tien Theme Park in Thu Duc City, as well as 10 routes using light buses to plug passengers into BRT route No. 1 in the 2021-2022 phase. As per current regulations, bus routes must employ vehicles with 17 seats or more, with areas for both sitting and standing passengers, with one exception that vehicles of 12-17 seats can operate on routes that cross narrow streets or bridges in more than half of their journeys. Considering this, the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee is asking for permission from the prime minister to use light buses of 12 to 17 seats to boost coverage of the public bus system …
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Vietnamese province’s quick response helps minimize risk of COVID-19 spread from border jumpers
Authorities in the Mekong Delta province of Dong Thap have taken prompt and assertive measures to contain the risk of COVID-19 spread from two border jumpers recently. On the afternoon of February 23, two Vietnamese women left Phnom Penh and entered Vietnamese illegally via an illicit racket's service. By 9:00 pm the same day, they had made it to Sa Rai Town, located in Tan Hong District, Dong Thap, and stayed at a local hotel. The two border jumpers were unaware they had been detected by local residents, who later reported the case to police’s quick response team. Officers arrived at the hotel within the next hour, but only one of the two women was at the venue. She was brought to a collective quarantine facility and was confirmed as the country’s COVID-19 patient No. 2,424 on February 26. Meanwhile, the other woman had already got on a long-haul coach to travel to Ho Chi Minh City. The coach operator was quickly informed of the case, and the driver was directed to turn the vehicle around. She was then taken to a centralized quarantine center and had her samples collected for COVID-19 testing. Her test result came back negative for the novel coronavirus. A quick response team for COVID-19 prevention and control holds a meeting in Dong Thap Province, Vietnam. Photo: Thai Thuan / Tuoi Tre “Thanks to the rapid response, the two women had not been able to travel to other places, while the number of their direct contacts was limited," said Doan Tan Buu, vice-chairman of the Dong Thap People’s Committee, who is also deputy head of the provincial steering committee for COVID-19 prevention and control. "The risk of the virus spread was therefore minimized.” The province has established many quick response teams consisting of police officers and health workers to fight against the pandemic. Aside from the effort of these quick response teams, which work around the clock, local residents also play a very important role in rapidly …
Leaving big cities: A transitory fad or a consistent trend?
Leaving big cities: A transitory fad or a consistent trend? By Nguyen Minh Hoa Living closer to nature or in the countryside is now a way of life - PHOTO: THANH HOA Titles such as “Farewell to Moscow,” “Departing Seoul,” or “Goodbye Kuala Lumpur” have made the headlines in the international press these days, suggesting a phenomenon in which many people left metropolises for the countryside. In Vietnam, a similar fact has also happened when residents departed HCMC and Hanoi to live in rural areas. Most of them did so because of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, will they return to their cities after the pandemic is over? The industrial revolution which broke out in Europe and North America at the beginning of the 17th century also triggered the mass exodus from villages to cities which were huge industrial hubs. Ever since, such a move, be it fast or slow, has never halted. The world is now home to truly “megacities” that may house up to 40% of the national population with Seoul being a single example. In Europe, the urban population rate of over 70% is now the established norm. Yet big cities have been facing with mounting pressures, such as high unemployment rates, unstable income, expensive living costs, environmental pollution, and traffic jams and accidents. According to sociologists, each urbanite has to shoulder from 20 to 30 extremely high risks every day—food poisoning, drug overdose, traffic and pit accidents, fires, building collapses, dog bites, and terrorism, to name but a few. It was perhaps these piling pressures that started the big homecoming trend at the end of the 20th century. Last year, Covid-19 helped this trend swiftly gather momentum both in scale and pace. Previously, homecoming or returning to the countryside involved mostly the elderly or the retired. Nowadays, returnees are also a considerable number of young people, which makes it more hectic. Rendered jobless by the global pandemic, hundreds of millions of people …
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