Leaving a residential area on Tran Nao Street at 6 a.m. on a weekend, 37-year-old Van Phong and his family took nearly an hour to travel less than four kilometers without reaching the HCMC–Long Thanh–Dau Giay Expressway that goes to Dong Nai, home to Long Thanh, scheduled to start commercial operations in December as Vietnam' largest airport.
Their SUV crawled along Luong Dinh Cua Street amid dense traffic waiting to pass through the An Phu Interchange alongside under-construction overpasses.
An aerial view of part of the An Phu Interchange in Ho Chi Minh City in July 2026. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran
Phong said: "Traffic heading onto the expressway is always heavy on weekends. Luong Dinh Cua Street is narrow, red lights last more than two minutes while green lights are only a few dozen seconds, therefore many vehicles have to wait through five or six signal cycles to go past the intersection."
There are days when he has to spend half an hour at the interchange, almost half the time it takes to drive from HCMC to Dau Giay.
