Another problem, which was mentioned earlier is the habits of the people who currently prefer their flexible motorcycles in traveling. I think it will take time to change this habit, even after we can provide a cheap, convenient and safe bus or metro system to keep the people not only from having to pay higher costs for their personal transport modes but also from the polluted air which is caused by motorcycle and car exhausted gas.
Prof.Ieda
If the current motorists use cars, the problem, I think, will be very big. And I think the situation is not so serious right now. I think it is less important to change the habit of using motorcycle to mass transit than to change the habit of using cars in the future to mass transit matter.
Dr.Iwata
In the future, if we don't do any thing about the use of cars, the situation in HCMC will follow and even be worse than that in Bangkok. Motorcycles are convenient, but their affect to traffic safety is getting worse. About 70-80% of traffic accidents are involved with motorcycles, which lead to human damage and cause social costs. So I think a certain kind of control over the ownership and use of motorcycle is very much necessary. A husband and wife carrying one or more children on a motorcycle are very dangerous not only to the family but also to other people.
Besides, those who are using motorcycles are not paying socio-economic costs fully. At present, people can easily buy their motorbikes at reasonable price, and they don't pay much for gasoline, which is relatively low, either.
However, I think, motorcycles are the main cause for traffic congestion at the moment and they should pay for such congestion cost. And those charges on motorcycle users will go into the construction or development costs of public transport. This cost sharing is another factor that we need to consider.
Prof.IEDA
I don't know if you have already introduced the earmarked tax on fuel use. But now, in other countries like Japan, some kind of earmarked tax exists. That means you can use tax income for some particular expenditure like road constructions or those things.
Dr.Iwata
Here, I think, the government is trying to formulate some kind of earmarked tax under the name of the road fund, because the required investment fund for infrastructure construction is very huge and we have to find it somewhere. And that is one proposal, one policy that we are considering to increase a certain amount from fuel, which is first used for the maintenance of the road, and then to cover infrastructure costs. So actually it is ongoing, but I think, for HCMC, it is difficult to increase tax on motorcycle, because everybody owns it.
