Most popular transportation mode in Ha Noi and Ho Chi Min City (HCMC) is motorbike.

Though bus services are recently strengthened as urban public transport, the share of bus services is still low, only under 6%. It is a matter of concern that serious congestion and air pollution by transport in future, which are caused by the accelerative increase of transportation amount by the enlargement of the city region and the acceleration of the transition from motorbike to car. Therefore public transport development is an urgent problem in these cities.

It will be expected in the master plan of urban transport for Ha Noi City that the share of public transport will come to 10% by 2020 year. It is important to promote public transport development, in view of the present situation and the outlook in this plan.

In this background, Japan Transport Cooperation Association (JTCA) has already cooperated to promote public transport development in these cities, by holding seminars in Ha Noi City in 1999 and in HCMC in 2000, as the activities of the Transport Cooperation Research Institute of JTCA.

In HCMC, the survey for urban transport development (HOUSTRANS project) by the JICA Study Team started at August 2002, according to the request of Viet Nam, but in Ha Noi City, the implementation of such study project is not adopted yet. In Ha Noi, the promotion of public transport development is one of the important problems to solve urgently, and as a first step, the enlargement of the bus enterprise by the purchase of new bus vehicles etc, was implemented.

But public transport modes have not been developed from the viewpoint of total urban transport policy as yet.

Therefore JTCA decided to hold a joint seminar with TDSI in Ha Noi within this fiscal year, to make the consensus of opinion between the persons concerned, to promote the adoption and the implementation of the study project in Ha Noi City by JICA, and to develop public transport modes from the viewpoint of total urban transport policy.

　

This seminar was hold with the objective of presenting a direction of developing urban public transport modes in Ha Noi City, on the base of the present situation and the experience of developing urban public transport, first in Japan and then in each countries.

In the seminar, the examples of the urban public transport systems which are well-established and developed in the other countries were illustrated by Japanese side, while the improved measures of urban public transport yet implemented and the present problems in Ha Noi City were explained by Vietnamese side.