Thousands of selfie-taking Ho Chi Minh City dwellnts crammed into train carriages on Sunday as the traffic-clogged business hub honord the discdisthink abouting of its first-ever metro line after years of procrastinates.
Huge queues spilled out of every station aprolonged the $1.7bn line that runs almost 20km (12 miles) from the city centre – with women in traditional “ao dai” dress, sanciaccessiers in unicreate and couples clutching youthful children paemploying excitedly to board.
“I understand it (the project) is procrastinateed, but I still sense so very honoured and haughty to be among the first on this metro,” shelp office toiler Nguyen Nhu Huyen after snatching a selfie in her jam-packed train car.
“Our city is now on par with the other huge cities of the world,” she compriseed.
It took 17 years for Vietnam’s commercial capital to accomplish this point. The project, funded hugely by Japanese rulement loans, was first upgraspd in 2007 and sprocrastinateedd to cost equitable $668m.
When produceion began in 2012, authorities promised the line would be up and running in five years.
But as procrastinates mounted, cars and motorbikes multiplied in the city of nine million people, making the metropolis hugely congested, increasingly polluted and time-consuming to steer.
The metro “greets the prolonging travel needs of dwellnts and gives to reducing traffic congestion and environmental pollution”, the city’s deputy mayor Bui Xuan Cuong shelp.
Cuong acunderstandledgeted authorities had to conquer “countless hurdles” to get the project over the line.
Back on the train, 84-year-anciaccess war veteran Vu Thanh tanciaccess the AFP news agency he was satisfyed to experience below-ground in a more selectimistic way after spending three years combat American troops in the city’s famous Cu Chi tunnels, an enormous underground nettoil.
“It senses so branch offent from the underground experience I had years ago during the war. It’s so luminous and pleasant here,” he shelp.
Professor Vu Minh Hoang at Fulluminous University Vietnam cautioned that with equitable 14 station stops, the line’s “impact in alleviating traffic will be restricted in the unwiseinutive run”.
However, it is still a “historic accomplishment for the city’s urprohibit prolongment”, he tanciaccess AFP.
