1000’s of selfie-taking Ho Chi Minh Metropolis residents crammed into practice carriages on Sunday because the traffic-clogged enterprise hub celebrated the opening of its first-ever metro line after years of delays.
Big queues spilled out of each station alongside the $1.7bn line that runs virtually 20km (12 miles) from town centre – with girls in conventional “ao dai” gown, troopers in uniform and {couples} clutching younger kids ready excitedly to board.
“I do know it (the challenge) is late, however I nonetheless really feel so very honoured and proud to be among the many first on this metro,” mentioned workplace employee Nguyen Nhu Huyen after snatching a selfie in her jam-packed practice automobile.
“Our metropolis is now on par with the opposite huge cities of the world,” she added.
It took 17 years for Vietnam’s industrial capital to achieve this level. The challenge, funded largely by Japanese authorities loans, was first accepted in 2007 and slated to value simply $668m.
When development started in 2012, authorities promised the road can be up and working in 5 years.
However as delays mounted, vehicles and motorbikes multiplied within the metropolis of 9 million folks, making the metropolis vastly congested, more and more polluted and time-consuming to navigate.
The metro “meets the rising journey wants of residents and contributes to decreasing visitors congestion and environmental air pollution”, town’s deputy mayor Bui Xuan Cuong mentioned.
Cuong admitted authorities needed to overcome “numerous hurdles” to get the challenge over the road.
Again on the practice, 84-year-old struggle veteran Vu Thanh instructed the AFP information company he was completely satisfied to expertise below-ground in a extra optimistic means after spending three years combating American troops within the metropolis’s well-known Cu Chi tunnels, an unlimited underground community.
“It feels so completely different from the underground expertise I had years in the past through the struggle. It’s so brilliant and good right here,” he mentioned.
Professor Vu Minh Hoang at Fulbright College Vietnam warned that with simply 14 station stops, the road’s “impression in assuaging visitors shall be restricted within the brief run”.
Nevertheless, it’s nonetheless a “historic achievement for town’s city improvement”, he instructed AFP.
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Sourcing information and pictures from aljazeera.com
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