HCM City faces a shortage of parking lots. VNA/VNS Photo Hoàng Hải

HCM CITY—The HCM City Department of Planning and Architecture has instructed the city’s Construction Planning Institute to work with the people's committees in all 24 districts to review parking lot plans included in the city’s master plan to 2025.

The districts will evaluate the feasibility of the plans and propose solutions to overcome existing shortcomings and new directions suitable for the city’s development until 2040.  

The department has reviewed 1,141 hectares of land for public parking lots approved by the Prime Minister in the city’s transportation development plan. It said that none of these areas has met the Ministry of Construction’s standards.

According to the standards, parking lots need to be built in industrial parks, and in urban areas, underground parking lots or multi-storey above-ground ones would be allowed, but safety and coordination with other construction works must be ensured.

Because the city faces a shortage of parking lots, many buses and cars spill out onto streets, occupying roads and obstructing traffic.

For many years, the city has planned to build four new bus stations at the city’s gateways in order to reduce traffic pressure in the inner city. However, only one station, a new eastern bus station in District 9 covering an area of ​​16 hectares, has opened.  

Because of difficulties in capital sources, construction of the remaining three bus stations has not been carried out.

These include the 15-ha Sông Tắc Bus station (also called Eastern Bus Station No.2) in District 9’s Trường Thạnh and Long Trường wards, a new 14-ha Western Bus Station in Bình Chánh District’s Tân Kiên Commune, and a 24-ha Xuyên Á Bus Station in Hóc Môn District.

These large-scale stations will be connected to  future metro routes.

The old 6.2-ha Eastern bus station in Bình Thạnh District will be used to become a bus interchange station in the city. City agencies are considering adjusting the scale of land use at the bus station under a decision of the Prime Minister.

The areas for parking lots in the city’s centre cover nearly 8.9 ha. Of these, 7.55 ha are in District 1.

Parking lots are planned to be built underground at Lê Văn Tám Park, Trống Đồng Music Stage, football stadium in Tao Đàn Park, and Hoa Lư Stadium.

However, only the underground parking lot in Trống Đồng Music Stage is under construction, and the HCM City Department of Transport has terminated a contract with the Investment and Development for Underground Space Corporation (IUS) to build an underground parking lot at Lê Văn Tám Park.

The other two lots are considering changing their investment mode from the BOO (build, own, operate) model.

As of June, the city had more than 8.1 million vehicles including 768,346 cars. VNS