<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" /> <title></title> <style type="text/css">  </style> </head> <body marginleft="10" marginright="10" margintop="10" marginbottom="10"> Dear Nguyen of Mahidol University, Thailand The city streets of Vietnam were very very beautiful  years back..........with the poetry of the cadence of people on their  bicycles........... no noise pollution, no air pollution............... before the nightmare of the motorcycles began.............Progress, so they say.........   Have you seen the master plan for transportation for HCMC? Does it have anything serious to say about non motorized transport in the whole scheme? ( You said your background is environmental science........NMT is definitely very environmental........) Based on the experiences of many developing countries, most master plans are not the end all, be all blueprints anyway. In many cases, there is some space for maneuvering somehow, somewhere. Would really want to be informed. Please share with us in  this egroup some insights on this  master plan, especially knowing that JICA "helped"  craft it. maraming salamat ( thank you in pilipino) roselle ROSELLE LEAH K RIVERA PhD Fellow Institute of Social Studies Kortenaerkade 12 2518 AX The Hague, Netherlands Office Tel: +31 70 4260428 Fax: +31 70 4260507 Mobile: +31 627315444 Hi everybody, My name is Nguyen Anh Dung, from Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Vietnam and I also want to do my master thesis (will start at the mid of 2007) about transportation for HCMC. As you know, traffic is really a problem in my country and it is getting worse. The recent  accidents of two famous professors (1 of US - got injured and 1 of Vietnam - dead) are just few among thousands of accidents every year (almost all caused by motorcycle). According to what I read on the net, HCMC has its master plan for transportation (done with the help from Japan International Cooperation Agency - JICA in 2004) and the authority wants to build a metro for the city also. Because of the master plan, I am not quite sure what my master thesis can do anything else about this field. Any idea is highly appreciated. My background is environmental science. Thank you. Nguyen Anh Dung Faculty of Environment and Resource Studies. Mahidol University, ThaiLand. </body> </html>