Traffic jam:

-Introduction:

Hello, my name is…. Class 8ci3 and this is my midterm speaking project video. Now, let’s imagine, you’re
riding your car or your motorbike going to an important job interview, or hangout with friends or just
going to work, everything is okay so far and then you see this ( picture of traffic jamming)… Now
because of this seemingly endless traffic, you are going to miss your job interview, possibly appearing
late in friends’ hangout or getting scold by your bosses because you’re late to work. This is known as a
traffic jam or traffic congestion and it happens a lot in Vietnam. So, in today’s video, I’ll be going through
the possible causes of traffic jam and possible solutions to solve it. So let’s begin.

-Mid section:

To make this video’s duration not too long, I will be focusing the problem in Vietnam only. Traffic jam
and traffic congestions happen all the time, specifically the most in Hanoi and HCM city, it happens so
much that it became a daily routine for lots of people to get stuck in traffic ( wake up, eat breakfast , go
to work, get stuck in traffic, done with work, go home and get stuck in traffic in the progress), it’s really
irritating to repeat that routine every day right? According to the International Cooperation Agency,
traffic jam damage over 3 billion dollars for Vietnam every single year, which is huge. So what causes
traffic jam, why it happened so much? I’ve gathered the information and through research I’ve
concluded 4 main causes to traffic jam and traffic congestions.

1 Human:

Let’s imagine again, you’re driving on the streets and it’s red light in the crossroads and then suddenly
out of nowhere, someone run the red light and the guy who did it got crash by another vehicle in the
middle of the crossroads and now an obstacle has appear in the middle of the road blocking other
vehicles from moving. And this is one of the main reasons to why traffic jam occur so much. People
lacking of senses when they’re driving, everybody wants to go first, everyone wants to be fast and so
during the process created traffic accidents that even make everyone go slower.

2 Too much personal vehicles:

In Hanoi, there are around 6.4 million vehicles, in that 6.7 million, there are 5.7 motorbikes and 700.000
cars (data from 2020). There are also about 18 million journeys per day made by personal vehicles in
Hanoi. Massive amounts of vehicles traveling through roads, but the roads weren’t designed to hold
such large amount of vehicles leading to congestions. Which also leads to my third point.

3. Poor road infrastructure:

2 lanes for each direction for a road that is considered “vital” for the city’s economy which hundreds of
thousands vehicles travel through every day, reasons for such thing is because the road was designed
for the amount of vehicles over maybe a decade or 20 years ago which is no longer suitable for a rapid
urbanizing cities like Hanoi or HCM. And too much load of vehicles traveling through everyday can cause
degradation for roads which creates potholes, waterholes which can causes irritations for the people.

4. Flood
Flooding can causes serious traffic jam and traffic accidents on the streets. Mainly occurs in Ho Chi Minh
during the rainy seasons, happened when water flows into the city faster than it can be drained, or
absorbed by rivers. This is the most irritating type of ways you can get stuck in a traffic jam. When it
floods, your vehicles can get stall or it wont start.

So what are the solutions? Through this I’ve separated the solutions to 2 types: short term ideas and
long term ideas. And I’ll be saying it’s good side and possible challenges and difficulty we can get when
doing these ideas.

Short-term ideas:

- Add more traffic polices to roads that often occurs congestions.

Traffic polices can help diverse the traffic, reduces the accidents and make people follow the
rules.

Long-term ideas:

- Expand and renovate roads making it bigger for vehicles to move through which ultimately
reduces the congestions. But expanding and renovating roads are not simple, for starters, a lot
of roads in Vietnam have buildings on the side where people lived or do business there, so how
are you going to expand, we can’t just destroys their houses because it’s where they lived or do
business and compensating is not easy because then, the government will have to pay a lot of
money to compensate for all the houses right next to road and for the costs of expanding the
road itself.
- Improve the drainage system, which is what Ho Chi Minh is doing right now, improving the
drainage system spreading it across over 23 districts in the cities and making the drainage
capacity 3 times larger. But of course, it costs a lot of money. 4.3 billion dollars for it to be
improved.
- Create metros, which is what Ho Chi Minh city is doing right now. Estimated to be finished in
2024 after 17 years of constructing, it is expected to solve the traffic jam problems in HCM City
but apart from the massive amount of money to construct it. What will happen if the people
decided not to use the metro? Maybe people feel it’s way too much of a hassle to walk to a
metro when you can just use your motorbike?
- We can increases people/children awareness => can take a long time to propaganda and for the
people to act better when driving.

Conclusions:

- As for the solutions I just said a moment ago, I don’t think traffic jam or traffic congestions will
disappear anytime soon, it’s almost unsolvable, but we can reduce it with the solutions starting
off with short-term ones and to the long-term ideas. And let’s hope that our future generations
can live a life without knowing what’s traffic jam is. Thanks for listening.