Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee has
announced five measures to be introduced to limit the use of personal vehicles
in an effort to ease congestion and improve traffic order and safety. This year
has been set forth by the Government as “the Year of Traffic Safety.”
The first measure requires that the Transport
Department and other concerned agencies must study a new management model using
Certificate of Eligibility (COE) to control vehicles to be registered for use
in the city. Based on the study, the city authorities will ask permission from
the Government to pilot the management model in HCMC.
The second states that relevant agencies must
make a plan to raise all fees related to registration, circulation and number
plates of personal vehicles.
According to the third, agencies concerned
must report the results of the study on collecting fees from cars that enter
the city’s downtown. The study’s report is a basis for developing further
steps.
The fourth measure bans some kinds of
vehicles, for example taxis or 30-plus-seat vehicles. These must be driven on
certain streets during certain hours.
Lastly, the department will collect and review
all feasible plans for the project to limit the use of personal vehicles and
coordinate with the Transport Ministry to implement the project.
In another effort to strengthen traffic order
and safety, the city authorities said they would review all licenses that have
been granted to users of roadsides and roadways and would revoke those no
longer found appropriate.
According to the Transport Department, 994
traffic accidents occurred in the city last year, killing 842 people and
injuring 461 others.
Motorbike overloading
According to a report from the Transport
Department, the city now has 10 million residents, including immigrants and
visitors, more than 5 million motorbikes and about 500,000 cars. Meanwhile, the
city has only 26 million square meters of road, which cannot accommodate such a
large number of vehicles.
At a seminar held last October to discuss a
study on the use of personal vehicles in HCMC, Dr. Pham Xuan Mai from the HCMC
Polytechnics University, said that for safety reasons, a motorbike needs 10
square meters of road and a 4-seat car, 30 square meters. As it stands, such
needs exceeded the total area of surface of 3,600 streets in the city.
At rush hour, motorbikes account for more than
93 percent of the total number of vehicles traveling in the city, causing
congestion in many areas, Mai said.
He said it is necessary to cut the current
number of motorbikes used in traffic by more than 50 percent and encourage
residents to use buses.
Meanwhile, Dr. Du Phuoc Tan, the study’s lead
researcher, said buses in HCMC now only have access to 1,000 out of the city’s
total 3,600 km of roads. As a result, local residents have no choice but to use
their own vehicles to travel on routes that don’t have buses, Tan said.
“However, because the city’s number of
motorbikes is forecast to increase to 7.5 million from the current 5 million in
the near future, if we wait for an expansion of the bus fleets and their routes
before restricting the use of personal vehicles, it would be too late.”
Meanwhile, Le Trung Tinh from the HCMC
Department of Transport suggested an “environmental fee” -- VND60,000 (US$2.9)
per month for a motorbike and VND300,000 per month for a cars -- should be
imposed on motorbike users to discourage them.
TUOITRENEWS
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