News Extra: 31 October 2023

Here is this week’s subscriber-only News Extra for transport and urban development in Southeast Asia.

Site updates

I had been experimenting with posting trip reports in this email format, but the image-heavy articles are not suitable for email delivery. I posted a trip report for Cyberjaya last week, and it has caused a stir in Malaysia. I got more comments there than any other article, so I think it’s better to post those articles at futuresoutheastasia.com.

I will post editorials of news in this News Extra of the newsletter. Sometimes these news articles start ideas for future articles, but I have so many article ideas that they may not happen.

Waiting for the HCMC Metro

It’s hard work loving a city when that city doesn’t have a metro system. I have been waiting for the HCMC Metro for 5 years (when Line 1 was meant to open). If all had gone to plan there would have been 2 metro lines running by 2020, but not much has gone to plan for the HCMC Metro. The general law of metro building is that the first line takes longer than expected, and then subsequent lines are built faster as construction knowledge is gained from the first. In the case of Ho Chi Minh City, Line 2 has become even more problematic than the first line. The most recent news said the completion of Line 2 has been pushed back 4 years. Considering that construction hasn’t even started, that might be optimistic.

I’m doing a profile of all of the planned lines of the HCMC Metro, and here is Line 2.

Subscribe to Premium to read the rest.