Planning misjudgement by the HCMC government

The following article from the official Ho Chi Minh City website delivers the bad news:

HCM City and South Korea’s GS Engineering & Construction have signed a memorandum of understanding on the project of building the elevated road No. 1 along the Nhieu Loc-Thi Nghe Canal.

The director of the Department of Communication and Public Works Tran Quang Phuong and GS E&C vice president Lee Hwi Sung signed the MoU on December 6 with the witness of HCM City Chairman Le Hoang Quan and South Korean consul general Min Young Woo.

Accordingly, the South Korean firm will build the elevated road running through districts 1, 3, Tan Binh, Phu Nhuan and Binh Thanh under the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) form.

The 10.8 km long, 17.6 m wide road will have a maximum design speed of 80 km per hour and total capital of VND4.7 trillion. Construction will take four years to complete.

A seminar will be held in mid-December to define the direction and design plan of the road.

Speaking at the signing, the city’s Vice Chairman Nguyen Huu Tin said this is one of the fourth elevated roads HCM City will build in the coming years to improve its transport capacity and reduce traffic jam.

He asked the Department of Communication and Public Works and relevant agencies to cooperate with GS E&C to carry out the next steps of the project.

(HCM City, December 7, 2007)

The Nhiêu Lộc-Thị Nghè Canal winds through the city from the airport area to north of downtown, emptying into the Saigon River.  Here is a photograph of the twisty canal as it passes between District 3 and the Phú Nhuận District:

Can you imagine an elevated freeway running down the middle of the canal, or at the side of the canal above the parkway along the canal?  In a city where the people decry the lack of park space, this is a ludicrous idea to put an elevated freeway along one of the few parkways in the city.  Now I know there will be those who say the canal is a filthy mess, and they will be somewhat right at this point, but the canal does have a construction project underway to clean up sewage drainage into the canal and clean it up.  The canal could become a very pleasant parkway for the people.  Here is a photograph of the local fire brigade exercising one recent morning along the canal:

The new freeway would run right under the window of our friend Jon Hoff of the The final word blog and the founder of the Connections travel service.  His apartment is in the high-rise tower in the photo below:

The route proposed by the city government is shown in red on the map below.

Does it make sense to design a freeway with a dozen sharp curves along its length?  Why not build the freeway along the alternate route shown in blue -- right down the middle of Nguyễn Văn Trỗi and Nam Kỳ Khởi Nghĩa Streets straight to downtown.  This is analogous to the same situation faced in Shanghai in the early 1990s between its old airport and the city center -- they had sense enough to build their elevated freeway straight along the main street from the airport to downtown.

This decision by the HCMC government is unfortunately just the latest misjudgement regarding planning for the city.  So how does one raise questions about these decisions to the government here?

Comments

[charvey]

You got that right, Mel. Not only is the planned route crazy, but elevated freeways were tried in droves in the USA in the 1960s and turned out to be ugly eyesores that rip the life out of the neighborhoods they run though.

For these reasons, many American cities are tearing town their elevated freeways. The 1989 San Francisco earthquake took down the Embarcadero freeway, which was a blight on the SF waterfront for decades. The city decided not to rebuild it. Seattle is considering getting rid of its elevated freeway too. And Boston tore its freeway down and sunk the whole thing under the city in the Big Dig (at stupendous cost and outrageous corruption).

It would be nice to see transportation planning more reliant on public transportation.

[Brian C]

Didn't Seoul just spend millions of dollars tearing down an elevated highway in downtown to make a beautiful walking area along a canal?

Terrible Terrible idea... and it is only one of 4 planned of these... Must be a lot of money going under the table for this.

Mel, what did you use for the map there? obviously google maps, but anything else?

[Walter]

Couldn't agree more - and your alternate proposal looks much more sensible.
The repulsive state of the canal does need to be addressed, though.
A few years ago, back before the SEA Games when they did all the initial beautification I held out great hopes for the canal. Since then they've just let the whole project sink. I know that where the canal crosses Pham Van Hai (the section I'm most familiar with) has returned to being a stinking, black mess, with the "parkland" on either side overgrown and filthy and useful only in its capacity as public toilet, for which it is extraordinarily popular after dark.

Chris -- you are definitely right about needing mass transit like subways first.
Brian, after saving the image in Google Earth as a .jpg, I took it into Adobe Elements to add the graphics.
Walter, I have walked the Pham Van Hai end of the canal a couple of times now, and you are right about the sorry state of things there. The city can't seem to manage well the contractor that is supposed to be doing the remediation work on the canal.

[Jon Hoff]

Mel
I am holding up hope that red tape can delay the construction for a while yet...the thought of a honking load of trucks, motorbikes and buses tearing through this now peaceful little track in the city is of course rubbish. Would make living in the apartments miserable as well. We are about to sign another year -- until Jan 2009..! Think we'll escape the construction?

[Viet]

due to the inherent lack of check & balance and competition in the system..... consequently, gov't officials can be "lobbied" easily by those undertable handshakes. the judgment is skewed while the incentive of private enterprises is to care for only their bottomline.

[Geoff]

I really wish they would speed up this project to clean up the canals. I know some of the houses on the sides have been cleared but there is lot more to go and the canal will never been clean while they are still there. I guess the government has to help rehouse these people because the compensation on house over a canal with no documents is going to next to nil. My gut feeling is that someday the gov will give up trying to keep the canals clean and they will be filled in and a standard road built in there place.

[Annie]

I agree :-(.

[Aaron]

Don't worry Jon, that road is just too big and costly so there's still a long way for the city council to reconsider.