Last weekend, Hanoi held a meeting to review and approve some contents of the Project "Smart Traffic in Hanoi". The project is expected to be submitted by the City People's Committee to the City People's Council for consideration and decision at the year-end meeting in December 2024. Among the solutions to limit traffic congestion, there is a project to collect fees for motor vehicles entering the inner city.
The project to collect fees for motor vehicles entering the inner city focuses on building 87 toll stations for private cars, from Ring Road 3 onwards. In the last report, the consulting unit surveyed and increased the number to more than 100 stations. The proposed fee for standard cars (with 12 seats or less) entering the inner city is from 50,000 - 100,000 VND/trip.
It is expected that when the project is implemented, about 20% of the number of vehicles that do not need to enter the inner city will be reduced. With the current traffic volume, if the inner city area can reduce 20% of the traffic volume during rush hour, traffic jams will no longer be complicated.
Charging fees for cars entering the city center may reduce the number of cars on the road, because in unnecessary cases, people calculate the pros and cons to travel. But for the majority of people, even if it costs money, they have to drive because they have no other choice.
Every day to go to work, many people are forced to use their personal vehicles because public transport is not enough. Therefore, it is impossible to expect to reduce traffic jams by this method alone, but it is necessary to deploy more synchronous solutions.
If Hanoi implements a fee for cars entering the inner city, it must create convenient public transport services. When people have alternative means of transport that are cheap and civilized, they will naturally choose to replace their personal vehicles.
Currently, public transport in Hanoi only meets nearly 20% of people's travel needs, so charging fees to limit private vehicles will not change much, because people are forced to use their own cars.
How long will it take Hanoi to have a modern public transport system that meets about 50% of the travel needs of its people? There is no answer to this question, so banning cars from the inner city, in addition to collecting more money, will still cause traffic jams, or even become more serious.
