scooter madness

scooter madness 11.14.09

city form: transit

The population of Saigon [though officially renamed Ho Chi Min City after the fall of Saigon in 1975, the city is still commonly referred to as Sài Gòn] is somewhere between 6 and 8 million, and it feels as though at least half of those people are riding scooters. The streets are flooded with a sea of scooters, moving like water around cars, buses, and pedestrians. Crossing the street (without stoplights or crosswalks, for the most part) is like fording a river. A photograph can begin to describe the sheer density of scooter traffic, but a video shows the complex choreography a bit better:

HIgh taxes on privately owned vehicles and a lack of public transportation account for the popularity of scooters as the predominant mode of transit. Though there is a bus system of 150 routes that serves the city, street traffic is so congested that travel time is very slow, and additional transit infrastructure has yet to be implemented. Plans are in the works for a metro system of 6 lines to be completed by 2014, funded primarily by Japanese investment, but construction has not yet begun.