At the beginning, I would like to mention some facts about the structure of the discussion which was done in the morning and this afternoon. We discussed the traffic matters in HCMC and Ha Noi and it was clear that both cities have mostly common problems. For example, first is both cities have motorbike problems, which is the main issue in terms of traffic accidents, safety model and also environmental pollution. But more important thing for me is that second stage of motorization, because at that stage, motorbikes are not very good for traffic accidents and environmental pollutions, but in terms of traffic congestion, it's not very serious at this moment. But if once the users of motorbikes will transfer to the use of private cars, everything will be in a chaos. No one can deal with the traffic problem. And I heard very serious news last night that in the near future, maybe in 2006, you will reduce the import tax dramatically and the price of private car will decrease rapidly and if economic things are good for people, maybe they will start to buy private cars. So we have just several years before that, so we must understand that we are in a very serious situation before the storm, very big storm. We have to be ready, be prepared for that. So this is the very common point between HCMC and Ha Noi. But at the same time, there are various different aspects in HCMC and Ha Noi. First of all, size is different. HCMC is one of the major cities in Asia. And while in one of the large cities. You say that it is not large but in European sense or American sense, it is still large-3 million people or 2 million people are already large cities. But anyway, the size is different in HCMC and Ha Noi. And that means what we have to do have to be different. And the second difference will be the use of cities. HCMC is basically the commercial city or international core of the commercial activities in the southeast Asia while Ha Noi is traditional cultural city and perhaps it can be the tourism city and of course the capital of Vietnam. So the features of the cities are very different. So maybe the target of the cities must be different, of course. So therefore, the countermeasures or what we should do for the future must be different for HN and HCMC. First of all, I would like to start the discussion about what we should do for the future at this moment. Several presenters talked about transportation and one speaker talked about city planning. So maybe the time period, time target is somewhat different between in the transportation sector and city planning sector. He said of very long-term matter these two persons provide us very short term aspects. May I ask all the presenters to speak about what we should do now?

　

Mr. Phi Anh: As you already know, HCMC is substantially larger than Ha Noi with much higher population and transport situation in HCMC is quite complex. And HCMC's organization is also different significantly from that of Ha Noi. For example, HMC at present has only one SoE in this field while Ha Noi has a very large SoE, thus, HCMC public transport development cannot follow exactly Ha Noi's public transport development model. Meanwhile, HCMC transport demand is very high, and at present, as Mr. Iwata has said, the investment for HCMC public transport system by rail is very costly and without a good planning strategy for land usage in HCMC, the city won't have any public transport model or network that can satisfy future demand. Therefore, at present, the measures for HCMC require practical studies and also steps and strategies to provide gradual access to transport modes so as to solve HCMC transport problems so that it would fulfill future demands in 15-20 years from now.

　

Ms. Phin: I would like to invite Mr. To Anh Tuan as you are one representative from Ha Noi. We can have one representative from HCMC and one from Ha Noi so that you can highlights the problems of both cities.

　

Mr. To Anh Tuan: Thank you. First of all, concerning Ha Noi's problems, through your discussion as well as from what we have presented, we can see that there are lots of problems. And in our opinions, actions should be taken in many fields and in each field, there will be both long-term and short-term works, but first of all, the action must be quite integrated in many fields with close coordination with each other. Regarding doable issues, as we have mentioned in the last part of our presentation, there are some works that Ha Noi is presently executing and we see that these works must be continued and wish that there would be opinion contribution and actual assistance. First of all, in our opinion, one urgent issue in Ha Noi is that there must be an immediate change in the development direction of urban transport. Before 2000, private vehicles developed abundantly and almost without any control. Such instance is very serious and the outcome was that in the years from 1998-2001, accident, traffic congestion and environmental pollution in Ha Noi became especially pressing as compared to previous time. We are unable to eliminate this situation at once, but we must change the development direction, otherwise, the situation shall eventually become unsolvable. Therefore, one urgent task to be implemented at once is to change the development direction of urban transport by apply a public passenger transport with high growth speed and large investment.

　

And we can see from Mr. Dung's report, over the last two years, Ha Noi has spent substantial investment for bus transport, including invest into 400 new buses in 2 years and bus's transport volume has increased by around 4 times in the last 2 year. Transport volume in 2002 is only nearly 50 million passengers, not yet very big, but its development potentials in my opinion, is very positive. So the first task is to prevent the situation from getting worse by creating changes. Ha Noi is working on this and will have to continue this work.

　

The second issue, which is in our opinion also an urgent issue that include both short and long-term works is to utilize efficiently all existing transport infrastructure in Ha Noi. Although the infrastructure is now insufficient and not very good, efficient utilization of it may increase or even double its capacity. Regarding measures, I see that in some presentations, there have already some useful measures from upgrade of existing road system by inexpensive measures, organization of traffic, clearance of sidewalks, and improvement of traveling manner of road users, etc. in brief to increase operation effectiveness of transport system. Many of the measures can be implemented soon.

　

The third point is infrastructure development. In our opinion, transport infrastructure development is in general a long-term issue, requiring large investment. However, there are stills issues that could be done in the short-term and can be address right now. Ha Noi, at present, is concentrating in the following issues regarding infrastructure development: firstly, develop the infrastructure serving the above two measures, first of all for public passenger transport-the infrastructure serving buses such as bus-ways, bus-lanes, garage and depot system, etc.; and secondly the "hot points" which is presently pressing points regarding accidents and traffic congestion such as in large intersections. As you see, Vong intersection, Nga Tu So intersection, etc. are being improved and thirdly the infrastructure that may not require large investment but facilitate the perfecting and efficient operating of existing infrastructure. These are the works that in our opinion can be done immediately. While road building, urban railway construction, etc. are also the works to be done immediately but could take longer time for completion and for their advantages to be promoted in the middle and long term.

　

And there are also some other measures, and one of which is legal and policy measures. In my opinion, technical and professional measures are direct measures, but whether such measures are executed and realized depends on the legal system behind them. And we think that there must be some regulations and legal documents to be issued immediately to ensure and facilitate the directions to be realized. Thank you.

　

Mr. Otsu: As I explained this morning, construct new roads, especially ring roads is very important for urban transport in Ha Noi, not only urban transport but also to promote industrialization in Ha Noi, around Ha Noi, Hai Phong, between Hai Phong and Ha Noi or between Ha Noi and Cai Lan port. So, for example, part of ring road 3 is now under construction by Japan ODA from National Highway 5 to NH 1. And other part of the ring road, NH 18 is also under construction. So if we develop another ring road or other part of another radial road effectively, it will take much cost. But the ODA is limited and it also is introduced to another cities, of course HCMC and central districts. So the fund for improving urban conditions in Ha Noi is limited. So we suggest how to improve the transport condition without much money. And I think after completion of this road, traffic condition will become much better than now. So at that time, it means 2006 or 2007, we establish the bus transport system using the aggregate bus and exclusive bus lane for main routes. So this is best way to promote the utilization of bus. But in the city centre, some routes concentrated, especially in northeast west, that's in south of West Lake. So some investment should be implemented around this. And after that, as mentioned by Dr.Iwata, if we need mass transit system, we introduce this kind of trunk road already have the extra lane of bus using this extra lane changed to tram or another mass transit system. I think it is the better way to improve Ha Noi urban public transport in one of the very conservative plan, but feasibility is high I think. Thank you.

　

Dr.Iwata: I think there are so many things to do, but I'd like to suggest that the short term solutions can promote the long term solutions. If we do a lot of things for short term solutions, if we doesn't promote the long term solutions, it's a waste of time and because every time, we have to do something, too busy with the short and middle solutions then we forget what will be the future, ambition of transport situation. So from this viewpoint, I'd like to suggest 2 things. First is as I explain in my presentation, about the many bus routes, we choose the important corridors, for which we put the different measures like we adjust the land use plan in anticipation that in the future there will be a larger mass transit system will be implemented and especially at the key interchange areas like stations, we should prepare a very careful land use plan and also if possible, the government start buying the land for future facilities. So this is one thing I'd like to suggest. Then second is the pricing. Developing the mass transit system in the future requires a huge amount of money. And where this money comes from? We cannot just expect that the government or somebody will give to the cities. So somebody has to pay for the good public transport system. So who? I think transport users. So if the public transport is more efficient, the more accepted by the people, private sector users have to show their part of the cost. So for this one, pricing is are in terms of legislation, vehicle registration fee, parking fees or some charges to enter the city centre like Singapore is doing-all kind of for the uses of private vehicles, they should show some cost to promote and help developing the public transport. But according to the newspapers, sometimes I see the government try to ban the registration to the year 2004. Those physical elimination or the banning of private transport, it doesn't bring any benefit to anybody. If it is totally banned, those who really would like to need the transport because we cannot force everybody to use only public transport, the policy should attend properly for certain occasions, government, people, ... and for certain purposes definitely we need private transport. So that physical banning is not really a very good solution, also it doesn't bring any revenues. So I think the proper pricing to the private transport is one area which the Government should look into immediately.

　

Mr. Takagi: This is not my suggestions or ideas, maybe just question to Professor Ieda. So in this morning I saw a video of a success case of public transport system in Brazil or Toronto. Also the corridor is very dense development either in residential area or commercial areas. When you are talking about bus transport system in Ha Noi city, where can you find such dense development residential area or commercial area. I like Ha Noi city because of its kind of situation-not so concentration nor congested in urban development. ... by ability of public transportation system, do you need that kind of concentration. That's one question.

　

One more question is operation. Public transport operation is either public sector or private sector. There are lots of experiences in other countries and other cities in urban transport system, there are lots of failures of both public sector and private sector. What are the reasons of the failures? So to promote public transport system in Ha Noi city, what kind of institutional sector should be prepared? So that's my 2 questions. Thank you.

　

Answer: Thank you very much for your deep questions. First of all, his question is about the density of land use and the corridor of public transportation. In the morning, I showed a quite difficult example of Curitiba and that was not the existing city but in a newly-developed corridor. So if I apply that on Ha Noi city, this place is already developed. But however, when you travel along route No1 maybe or route No6, you will find a suburban area in which, urban stroll is undergone and you will find so many apartment and houses are under construction without having any good infrastructure. So if you concentrate this strolled development along some corridors like here, or here, maybe you can construct new corridors or well-organized extension of corridors onto this suburban area. And even in Curitiba, city center was old city and they are rather concerned with conserving the buildings and so they don't have any strong policy to develop other corridors. So this is one point. So in total, maybe I can say that land use control or land use development must be very well incorporated with the public transit. But this is not only in the existing city but also applied to newly-developed area.

　

Second question is operation: The organization of operation can be either private sector or private company or by public corporation. And most of the cities experienced terrors that public large corporation is less efficient than private companies. But at the same time, if you have saw many private companies in the city like bus operators or truck companies, no one can control them, so transportation situation will be very chaotic sometimes. I stayed in Manila about 10 years ago and there were so many private bus companies. They always compete with each other and along a very big road named Edsa, approximately 20 or 30 bus companies are competing and every driver of bus companies were hustling to get to the bus stops as fast as possible, so you would find a very crowded traffic jam along the bus stop plan places. This is one point. So even if we utilize private companies, we need some coordinated association or coordinated autarchy system, institutional system in which all private sectors must be obeyed or in which government policies will be functional somewhat. And not for developing countries but maybe also in developed countries, we have the concept of bodyguard separation of infrastructure and operation sometimes. But the model of vertical separation sometimes suggests you to separate operators into 2 parts: one is owning of properties like bus vehicles or like that and another is operation. So sometimes, vehicles can be owned by private sector and operation must/can be entrusted to the private companies so that public corporation can enjoy the route of the efficient operation of the private sector. But anyway, this is a very important issue and it must be discussed in deep based on various different situation of each city so I think there is no definite general solution. Thank you for your question.

　

Dr. Cao Ngoc Chau: In his presentation, Mr. Iwata said that maximum capacity of public rail transport is 1,000,000-1,500,000. So I'd like to know the basis for such figures, number of routes, number of kilometers, etc. As if this is the maximum capacity, rail transport's efficiency will be quite low. So I'd like Mr. Iwata to give more detailed explanation regarding this.

　

Mr. Iwata: What I said in my slide is that normally, one route/line of LRT in Asian cities is 15 to 20 km. So this one line can carry 300,000 to maximum 400,000 passengers a day. So if Ha Noi, for example, can construct three 15 km lines, totally 45 km, it can carry maximum in reality about 1 million passengers. But constructing 3 lines of 45 km is very expensive. Of course, if Ha Noi can afford to construct more, say 100 km, it can carry many more. So the figure I gave in my presentation is very rough figures. What I like to say is that even if the cities in Asia can construct the railways, majority of the demand sill has to be met by buses. That's what I'd like to say.

　

Ms. Phin: I've seen here many representatives from foreign institutions. May I ask for the comments of Mr. Elise from the WB?

　

WB representative: Thank you. I am sorry for coming so late so all I got was Mr. Iwata's presentation. But I think there're few issues that come to mine and I apologize for missing the things you said before. The first thing that comes to mine is that many of the things you are proposing, bus ways, preservation of cultural heritages of Ha Noi for example, will take a lot of political will from the authority and a lot of coordination. I was just wondering during your study to what extent you got a sense for whether there is a political will to go fall on these issues in a coordinated manner, whether all the authorities that have to be involved and sign up for to what you are proposing which is to me very sensible. Thank you.

　

Mr. Iwata: With regard to the presentation. What I did in this paper is not very based on thorough analysis. I have just drawn the ideas then both bus ways and controls for heritage city districts because a huge institutional coordination and arrangement that you said is true. However, of course we need a concerted vision for the future, especially how to deal with city centre, but this is one of the unique characteristics of Ha Noi and HCMC which is quite different from other cities like Manila, Jakarta or Bangkok. So my suggestion here is how to preserve the city center without losing the ability and the dynamic of urban development. That is one of the very important planning themes which I think every body has to consider very seriously. Then with regards to the bus ways, I think it's relatively not very difficult because we have started talking to the People's Committee in HCMC. First is how to give a better environment to the buses. But while we continue the discussions, we feel more and more confident that we have to give the more exclusive spaces for buses; otherwise, bus operation and investment the government is doing in bus operation may not bring the maximum benefit. So we are now about to choose one corridor to test the viability of implementing the bus-lane first, which is Tran Hung Dao street, for which I think TUPWS is also quite confident at least they are expressing their political will to try to do it first to see the reaction of road users and society. So we started to plan this as pilot scheme and probably we can start the implementation within 2-3 months so that we can see the effects of this policy test project.

　

Mr. Duong: I would like to raise 3 questions to the foreign experts. First, would you please tell us about the proportion of passenger transported by bus between public sector and private sector in your country, which one is bigger? Secondly, provided that that of the public sector is bigger, so how is your subsidy to bus transport? Do you have subsidy and when is the subsidy stopped-after a certain period of time or is there any other criteria for stopping subsidy or will the subsidy be permanent?

　

The third question is about small and short cargo transportation for daily living of the people in inner city area. How do you organize this in your country? At present, in Ha Noi, in the past one or two years, the people transporting fresh goods for inner city demand are having difficulties as the Government bans cycles, and we are having some difficulties regarding this. At present, we are studying the solutions for this, but I would like to know how Japan deal with this issue. Thank you.

　

Professor Ieda: About the percentage of buses of state ownership and private ownership, I can say right now that at least for inter-city bus transportation all of them are under private sector. And in the city bus transportation, there are a few public transport corporation which is in charge of bus operation and others are under private sector. I cannot say the exact number but a huge. In Tokyo city, we have transport authority in charge of ... system and also bus transportation and Yokohama also has one. But most of the cities are under private bus companies.

　

And in terms of subsidies, the Government of Japan or the local Governments are paying nothing for private and also public bus operation. They are completely independent from the Government budget or local Government budget. So they are equally even. That means level of fare is comparatively expensive, so that means they are losing ridership. So I don't think this is the best idea. So I think we have many things to improve. And in the rural areas with very low density of population, the Government or local prefecture Government are paying a little amount of subsidy for the operator which is keeping the minimum service of the transportation.

　

And for the second question about short-distance freight transportation or fresh logistics in the cities, we have not very strict organizing institutional system right now because we deregulated these things approximately 10 years ago. But before that, all things are under strict regulation of the Government. So if you'd like to start the operation of truck service or transportation of goods like fish, cargo or vegetable, you have to get the permission of the Government to have the trucks, or the business and also your fare or tariff is under strict control. So I think at the beginning of the stage of the development of the city economy, maybe having some kinds of regulation will make the system clear and a sound one. And once your economic situation is getting better or sustainable one, you can release or deregulate these regulations little by little and you can enjoy the fruitful result of the market economy. That is the situation we have.

　

Mr. Otsu: About bus operation, one expert from Japan's Yokohama city is a bus expert and he said in Yokohama city, half of the Yokohama city's buses are operated by 7 private bus companies and the other half are operated by the city government. Both private sector and city Government operate in same areas but almost all districts are divided into several areas for the companies to operate. So it means Government don't compete with the private sector, competition with the private sector is good, but city Government don't enter the areas for private sector bus' operating. This means they share the districts.

　

Mr. Ieda: Actually I think freight transportation in the city is quite important for transportation planning in developing countries' cities. Up to now, I think most of the transportation surveys or studies having been done put the important or focus on just only the passenger transportation and city logistics or freight transportation were almost neglected because most people say it's too complicated, too difficult to find something. But I personally think freight transportation is the key issue for the future. Because when you compare developed countries' city and developing countries' city, passenger transportation is not very different, for example, trips, number of trips provided by one person, one resident in the city is almost two trips a day in every country, in every city, mostly. But when you compare the production of freight transportation provided by one person in developing countries' cities is less than one half or one third comparing to that of developed countries' cities. So if in the future you get a big economic growth, freight transportation law will be much higher, so we have to deal with this matter more seriously and you have to be ready to deal with this matter in advance. This is what we have been studying for five or six years by comparison of Manila, Bangkok and Tokyo and we found that this is a very serious problem, thank you.

　

Mr. Phi Anh: I would like to have an additional opinion concerning freight public transport study. In fact, as in the case of HOUSTRANS study, it should not concentrate on only peoples' traveling but also freight transport. As HCMC has the volume of freight transport that cannot be compared with any other city in Vietnam. With a port system within the city having the biggest throughput of Vietnam's port system, if the study is only on passenger transport and passenger trips, it cannot solve HCMC's transport issue. Similarly, if we look at Ha Noi map, we can see that Ha Noi is divided into 2 areas: the old town in the south and another urban area in the north which is being developed at the other end of Long Bien bridge, on Gia Lam area. HCMC also has Sai Gon river dividing the city into 2 areas, but one characteristics of Sai Gon is that all bridges over Sai Gon must have the air clearance of from 45-53 meters while in Ha Noi, air clearance of bridges is not very high. From such different context, HCMC' transport study cannot coincide exactly with Ha Noi's model study although both cities have a river running through.

　

The second issue, as we have seen is that the Government's determination. If 5 years ago, everybody would say that relocation of Sai Gon port and Tan Cang port would be impossible, but now, both the city and central Government are determined to relocate the ports out of HCMC in the near future. That proves the determination of Vietnam Government. Secondly, as Mr. Iwata has mentioned about the city government's determination, a week ago, we worked with HCMC PC and HCMC Government completely support the Policy Test Project, that is establishment of a transport corridor on some important roads of HCMC, that is Sai Gon-Binh Tay route, on the present Tran Hung Dao road to Cho Lon, forming a bus transport corridor using the testing policies so that later on can be applied for many other bus routes in the city, forming a proposal for future development of the city's transport. That is the city municipal's determination that can be seen right now.

　

Question: Now I am working with Dr.Iwata and Mr. Phi Anh in HCMC for the urban transport project and as Dr.Iwata explained in his presentation, basing the result of our study, 95% of HCMC people agreed to the public-oriented city - HCMC should be going to a bus-oriented city. My question is everyone says bus is important and we should improve it, but they keep on using motorbikes, so I want to ask the Vietnamese people what is your most important reason for using motorbikes, is that convenient or you don't have good bus operation? If so, what conditions should be prepared so that you will move to bus transport?

　

Mr. Phi Anh: I would give you the answer right now. People are now looking forward to bus services. As people now realize that traffic accident situation has been very serious in both cities and all people would want to minimize traffic accidents. Thus public transport gives people a better safety and people are all aware of that. Nevertheless, bus services' quality at present is not satisfactory. For example, in HCMC, at present, HCMC has over 2,000 buses, but only 500 of them is operable regarding operating age; and since HCMC buses are too old for operation and in the past years, the city have yet determined to renew its bus fleet, people cannot use buses due to their bad conditions. And as I said in the morning, there were two accidents caused by bus because the bus was too old, it cannot break and run into travelers. Such accidents occurred in only the last 3 months and it proved that with good bus services, Vietnamese people would be willing to use buses rather than sticking to motorbikes. And two obvious example here is Ms. Doan Thi Phin and Mr. Cao Ngoc Chau, both of them use buses for work while one year ago, they used motorbikes. That is to show that our Vietnamese people are very willing to use buses if only international donors help use formulate an optimal plan for the development of bus network to ensure its sound and proper development. Investors should invest in the services and facilities for the development of public transport in Ha Noi and HCMC and Vietnam people would be very grateful for your assistance to our two cities.

　

Ms. Phin: I would like to give some further explanation. As you have said, in HCMC survey, 95% of the people said that the city should be developed towards a public transport city. But why people keep on using motorcycle? With the first issue, why people want to develop public passenger transport, in fact, motorbikes is very convenient, it can reach any destination without changing to any other modes of transport, especially in the distances of Ha Noi and HCMC. Particularly for Ha Noi, according to a survey, average traveling distance is only about 4 km as the city is quite small. However, in spite of its convenience, motorbike is the most unsafe means of transport of all transport modes as according to statistics, 70% of the accidents are caused by motorbikes. Moreover, Vietnamese usually do not wear helmet when riding motorbikes, therefore, brain injuries due to motorbike accident are quite significant. And secondly, social expenses for traveling by motorbikes are very big. For example, in HCMC, according to Mr. Phi Anh, there are currently 2 million motorbikes, if on average one motorbike takes 1,000 USD, the amount people have spent for traveling is 2 billion USD. Thirdly, environment pollution also has significant impact. And fourthly, motorbikes keep taking a large proportion just because our public passenger transport is still too insignificant. In HCMC, according to the survey, public passenger transport account for only 1% and in Ha Noi, this year, the ratio is only 7% by our observation and according to Ha Noi's report over 10%, despite the improvements and growths. So it's clear that the remaining 90% of traveling demand in Ha Noi and 99% in HCMC must be fulfilled by other modes of transport. Therefore, people have to keep using motorbikes for traveling. Secondly, with such insignificant service, bus service quality in Ha Noi and HCMC needs to be further improved, especially bus frequency, as Mr. Cao Ngoc Chau said, during peak hours, although the service have been improved, buses are very crowded; moreover there are sometimes congestions at intersections; and that the city hasn't got any bus route map so people can be sure of bus services' reliability regarding time punctuation. So people cannot use bus to go for work. Concerning the city municipal and TUWPS, in our opinion, bus service should be strengthened so as to attract more passengers. And another cause for buses' failure to have maximum ridership is the limited infrastructure of both Ha Noi and HCMC, as over 80% of Ha Noi's streets have the width of less than 10 meters. Therefore bus services arrangement is very difficult and despite the efforts, bus's share in passenger transport is still insignificant and people keep on using motorcycles despite their weaknesses as I have said above.

　

- I would like to have some opinion in this issue. I think that Vietnamese, although at present mostly use motorbikes, do not have a special habit or hobby of using motorbikes. So once Ha Noi and HCMC's public passenger system develops as in other cities over the world where this service system is developed, the ratio of people using public transport in Ha Noi will be similar to other countries'. Nevertheless, the process of developing a good public passenger transport system requires a rather long amount of time. Although the initial development of bus transport in the last two year has been very significant, but in fact, bus transport accounts for only less than 10% of traveling demand. Bus service network covers only a small area of Ha Noi city and other bus supporting facilities are yet to be developed. Therefore, if public passenger transport system in general and bus transport system in particular in Ha Noi are better developed, we believe that Ha Noi people will use public transport or buses more and more. So one reason is that development of public passenger transport requires time.

　

And secondly, in my opinion, whether people use public transport do not depend only on public transport but also other living conditions of the urban area, for example service systems. If the service system is still fragmented and incomprehensive, for example if people wanting to buy several necessary things for a day have to go to 2-3 shops, then motorbikes will still be the optimal choice. So together with the development of public passenger transport, urban life services must be accordingly developed so as to make public transport using convenient and suitable.

　

The third point is peoples' habit and hesitation to changes. If 10 or 15 years ago we introduced public passenger transport in Ha Noi or HCMC, many people would have not bought motorcycles. But now, motorcycles have been widespread equipped, and it will take time for people to abandon motorcycles, which is currently a valuable assets to Vietnamese. And habit is in my opinion an important factor. For a long time, in Ha Noi and HCMC, public passenger transport wasn't developed, so a large proportion of the population do not have the habit of using public transport. Many people would be very worried if being asked to use bus rather than motorcycle to go to a certain place. This also requires times for people to get used to such information of bus routes, location of bus stops, etc. Such factors also affect the shift from motorbikes to buses. Nevertheless, I trust that in the future, if Ha Noi and HCMC develop a good public passenger transport system as in other cities, the use of public passenger transport in Ha Noi will be similar to such other cities and Ha Noi and HCMC won't be an exception.

　

Mr. Ieda: It's very interesting discussing about how to deal with transportation in the city of Ha Noi but the time is up, so I'd like to give some overall comments. My first point is that Ha Noi has to try to create original model of the city and transportation. Of course there are already many examples in the world, success stories and failure stories. Even in success cities you will find failure inside or backside of the success, so we have to learn plus and minus altogether and you can choose what you like and you don't have to take what you don't like. This is the advantage of Ha Noi which has not yet been trying to introduce a public transit system right now. So this is rather advantage for Ha Noi. So please try to create your original plan. This is the first point.

　

The second point is that even if you learn many positive and negative points from other examples, I recommend you to try some innovative challenge, using new technologies even in a very short corridors or even in a small point is better, I don't mean the large infrastructure but using IT, ITS or the system, or the technology which is not very expensive but will be efficient. And if you try this new thing, even if it's not very long, not very large, Ha Noi will be nearly the original city in terms of transportation technique.

　

Third is that I think you need to establish the good control system of land use or land development system. In most of the countries in Asia, we are not very successful in terms of control of the development or control of the land use and control of the volume, especially volume control was not successful in most of the cities in Asia. But I think Ha Noi also have advantageous point in terms of this. Because we learn today that you introduced new bus system in the past few years and up to now it is rather successful, that means your institutional system or your people behavior is not very negative. So I think you will develop good control system of the land use also.

　

The fourth point is that we have to understand that we have not very long time to wait. Because just before the second stage of motorization, you have to be ready in the short term. Basically, the city planning or transportation planning have to be created with a long-term concern, maybe 20 years, 30 years and sometimes hundred years. Your infrastructure can be used even after hundred years. So we need good targets and good plan. But at the same time, we have not enough time right now. So we have to make a good hit or homerun in the early yenning. So we don't have to wait, please understand that. And as far as we have not enough time before the second stage of motorization, we need to make our transportation study in a very efficient way. That means our study must be open style, transparent one, scientific and reasonable to adopt good ideas of every countries and every cities. That means I'd like to suggest you to corporate with each other, I find several foreign people, maybe from Europe, US and Japan, and I think you should corporate with each other and communicate to each other to find what is the best idea. This is my last comment. Thank you.