A section near Long Phuoc toll station on the Ho Chi Minh City - Long Thanh - Dau Giay expressway, in the lane heading to Dong Nai Province from Ho Chi Minh City, experienced heavy congestion on Saturday morning.
Traffic police reported a five-kilometer jam caused by a chain collision involving four cars on the early in the morning.
Photo by Minh Bang
The incident coincided with an influx of travelers heading to their hometowns for Tet, prompting intermittent expressway closures to manage the flow.
Closure durations ranged from 30 to 60 minutes, with vehicles redirected onto Mai Chi Tho Road towards the Hanoi Highway that connects HCMC and Dong Nai.
A representative of a patrol team under the Traffic Police Department said Saturday began the Tet traffic peak, with vehicle counts exceeding 100,000 per day on the expressway, a significant increase from previous days.
Therefore, incidents on the route easily lead to congestion.
A three-kilometer stretch from the Do Xuan Hop Bridge to the An Phu Interchange saw cars inching forward.
Congestion at the interchange area also affected traffic on Mai Chi Tho, a vital artery leading to Ho Chi Minh City’s Cat Lai port.
As Tet approaches, the demand for goods transportation increases significantly, with a large volume of vehicles entering and exiting Cat Lai port. According to the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Transport, the port handles over 70% of Vietnam’s import and export containers, seeing about 22,000 container trucks daily during Tet.
Vo Nguyen Giap, formerly part of the Hanoi Highway, which connects Ho Chi Minh City center to provinces in central Vietnam, also experienced long traffic jams.
This route also intersects with Mai Chi Tho road connecting to Cat Lai port.
The most severe congestion on the route is burdened by container trucks heading to Ho Chi Minh City’s Phuoc Long port.
Ho Van Nam, a container truck driver, said traffic jams in this area last all day every time Tet approaches. According to Nam, normally, the drive from Di An City in Binh Duong Province to Cat Lai port takes only three hours, but it doubles as Tet nears.
“I usually make two trips a day, but these days I can only manage one trip,” he said. “It's very exhausting because there’s congestion everywhere.”
By 3:30 p.m. Saturday, congestion persisted on the routes.
The high volume of vehicles also caused more than 10 km of traffic jams on the Vinh Hao - Phan Thiet expressway in central Vietnam Saturday morning.
