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 …
Quy nhon city
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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Military and public security units receive recruits
Secretary of the Hanoi Municipal Party Committee Vuong Dinh Hue attended the handover ceremony in Dong Anh district and presented gifts to units that youths will serve in. This year, 239 youths in Dong Anh district will serve in military and public security forces. 19.2% of them hold university and college degrees while 57% of them graduated from high school. Attentively, 52% of the recruits volunteered to do the military service. * Directing the ceremony in Thanh Hoa city to hand over more than 3,500 youths from 27 localities in Thanh Hoa province to units under the Ministries of National Defense and Public Security, Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Tan Cuong, Deputy Defense Minister asked units to promptly receive the young recruits, arrange accommodations for them, and start military training programs. Among the recruits, nearly 1,000 youths come from ethnic minority groups. * Deputy Defense Minister Senior Lieutenant General Le Huy Vinh attended a recruit handover ceremony in Da Nang city and encouraged youths to complete their military service. 18.3% of over 1,000 youths doing military services in this coastal city are university and college degree holders and 1.7% of them are local workers. * Deputy Defense Minister Vice Admiral Pham Hoai Nam directed the handover ceremony in Hoai Nhon district, Binh Dinh province. This year, more than 2,300 youths from the province joined the military. * Sr. Lt. Gen. Tran Quang Phuong, Deputy Director of the General Department of Politics of the Vietnam People’s Army, attended a ceremony in Duc Pho town, Quang Ngai province to hand over 2,450 youths to military units and 190 youths to public security units. 0.39% of the recruits are Party members. * The recruit handover ceremony in Song Cong city, Thai Nguyen province, saw the presence of Lt. Gen. Nguyen Van Nghia, Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Vietnam People’s Army, and Lt. Gen. Nguyen Hong Thai, Commander of Military Region 1. This year, 1,800 youths …
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