The move is part of a draft project on enhancing the management of private transport vehicles to ease congestion in Ha Noi.
In addition, private cars are proposed to be restricted at rush hours. Motorbikes from other provinces will be banned from entering the city from 7:00 am to 7: 00 pm and the old quarters.
Under the draft plan, motorbikes from other provinces will be restricted in three stages:
Stage 1: From 2020, motorcycle traffic will be limited at old quarters at weekends, holidays, and New Year festivals. From 2021, motorcycles from other provinces will be prohibited from entering the city (the first belt) daily from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm; the old quarters at weekends.
Stage 2: From 2023, motorcycles from other provinces will be excluded at the second belt and limited at old streets like Tran Hung Dao and Ly Thuong Kiet.
State 3: From 2025, motorcycles will be banned at some places within the third belt. Private cars will be limited at some streets and regions. In addition, private cars will be subjected to extra expenditures for entering central streets at rush hours.
Besides limiting private vehicles, Ha Noi will allocate more extrepot and boost public transports to the central areas.
Especially, the Ha Noi Transport Department set a roadmap to develop the public transport fleet with over 500-550 buses each year.
By 2020, public transportation will be able to handle 25% of demand or yearly reduce 20,000 private cars and 120,000 motorbikes.
Statistics showed that Ha Noi housed over 5 million motorbikes (a year-on-year surge of 12.9%) and over 1 million bicycles.
Meanwhile, growth pace of local transport infrastructure is only 3.9% per year. Without any tough measures, by 2020, Ha Noi will have 938,000 cars, 6.2 million motorbikes. By 2025, the number of car and motorbike will be 1.3 million and 7.3 million respectively. The infrastructure can't catch up with the growth and traffic demand will exceed the capacity of the road system by 12 times and no vehicles would be able to move./.
By Khanh Phuong