The largest bus station in the country has been invested in and built very modernly with the goal of serving about 7 million passengers per year. However, this goal is still far from being achieved, because currently there are only about 3,000 passengers per day, meaning only over 1 million passengers per year.
Increasing by 1 million passengers per year is not easy, so to reach 7 million, breakthrough solutions are needed.
First of all, we must see the law of the market, that is, if there is profit, passengers will come, if there is no profit, passengers will turn away. The profit here is convenience and cost savings.
The disadvantage of Mien Dong Bus Station is that it is located 20km from the city center. If passengers want to take a bus from this bus station, they have to take a taxi or motorbike taxi, which takes a lot of time and costs more money. No one is foolish enough to spend an extra five to seventy thousand to a few hundred thousand dong to go from home to the bus station. Meanwhile, the fare for the desired route may only cost a few hundred thousand dong.
The bus companies also want to rent parking lots at Mien Dong Bus Station, but there are too few passengers so they are not interested. The bus companies also try to organize shuttle buses, but the cost of this activity pushes up the ticket prices, and passengers do not accept it. If the ticket prices are lowered, the revenue will not be enough to cover the expenses. Of course, a loss-making business cannot survive, that is the law.
The proposed solution is to deploy a shuttle bus service from the inner city to the station, the bus companies will pay 30,000 VND/passenger, included in the passenger ticket price.
If all bus companies contract with a service unit to transfer passengers from home to the bus station and vice versa, there will be more passengers than if each bus company organizes it separately. Of course, to ensure convenience, the service vehicle must pick up and drop off passengers at the location requested by the passenger, not forcing the passenger to go to the transfer station.
The fare of 30,000 VND for a transit passenger is also reasonable, because if you go from the inner city districts to Mien Dong Bus Station, even if you take a motorbike taxi or Grab Bike, the cost is still higher than 30,000 VND.
One expectation that has been set to "save" the Eastern Bus Station from its lack of passengers is Metro Line 1 (Ben Thanh - Suoi Tien) which is expected to be operational by the end of this year. With this metro line, passengers can travel from the inner city to the Eastern Bus Station both quickly and cheaply.
But for passengers to choose, there must be a public transport system connecting the routes with the metro stations.
