[HANOI] Vietnam – known for the notorious traffic jams in its major cities – wants more people to ditch their motorbikes and other vehicles and take public transport instead, but lengthy delays to get various metro projects completed and operational could scupper efforts to do so.

The country’s first metro system in the capital Hanoi – the 13-km, 12-station Cat Linh-Ha Dong elevated railway line – finally began service in 2021, after a decade of construction and numerous delays. Official development assistance loans paid for most of the US$868 million construction cost, with the rest covered by the Vietnamese government’s corresponding capital.

Ly Dieu Linh, a 27-year-old office worker who commutes to her workplace in downtown Hanoi, prefers taking this mass rapid transit (MRT) system to riding a motorbike, as the latter usually means getting stuck in gridlock on the main roads.