(4) Question and Discussion　Moderator Dr. Phin (TDSI)

Ms. Phin: According to the agenda, we have 20 minutes left until lunch break. And I would like to propose to all delegates here that should you have any opinions and comments on this morning's presentations, please raise your questions so that we can start the discussion.

　

In this second session, we have listened to 3 presentations. The first is urban transport situation in Ha Noi and bus services in 2002, by Mr. Bui Xuan Dung, Vice Director of TUPWS. In his presentation, Mr. Dung has also mentioned Ha Noi TUPWS's plans in 2003 as well as the objectives to be achieved in coming times. We also know that in recent time, bus services for Ha Noi have had significant progresses. We usually say that this is thanks to lots of factors: the Government have been very concerned of the issue, the city even include it in the city Party Committee's Resolution and the people are very favored for the development of public passenger transport in Ha Noi.

　

In fact, over the past years, traffic congestions have occurred in both Ha Noi and HCMC. And bus services' improvements in recent time in Ha Noi - such initial results can be a good experience for HCMC. As in Mr. Phi Anh's presentation, with population doubling Ha Noi's and the number of motorcycle also doubling Ha Noi's, it must be said that HCMC is facing a traffic problem that is even more serious than Ha Noi's. Therefore, recently, Japan Government has sponsored a HOUSTRANS study and our TDSI-South, directed by Mr. Phi Anh, have been the major counterpart agency, working with HCMC TUPWS and Department of Planning and Architecture and Japan's ALMEC consulting company to execute the study. So far, the study has finished a household survey on large scale, a traffic count survey on many intersections and a survey on public passenger transport. These are the surveys having been done in the last 3 months and up to now, preliminary results have been collected and analyzed.

　

The third presentation is Mr. Otsu's concerning some recommendations and prioritized solutions to Ha Noi's traffic issues. These are the suggestions from his accumulation, observation and study of Ha Noi's traffic situation in his 2 years working in Ha Noi. So now, should you have any questions or further comments, please don't hesitate raising your voice as we still have 20 more minutes in this morning's agenda. This is also a good chance for us to discuss Ha Noi's traffic problems.

　

I would like to invite you, both Vietnamese and Japanese participants, to give your opinions and comments.

　

I think that to let you have time to prepare your opinion, I will raise a question to Mr. Bui Xuan Dung, vice director of Ha Noi TUPWS. In your presentation, there is one issue emerged in Ha Noi PC's plans in general and TUPWS's plan in particular for 2003, that is socialization of bus transport service in Ha Noi. I would like you to speak in more details about Ha Noi PC as well as TUPWS's plans regarding socialization of bus transport services.

　

Mr. Bui Xuan Dung: Regarding the city's several services such as environmental issues and other issues or traffic and transport, Ha Noi has had the socialization policy. Regarding public transport, taxi mode has many sectors participating in. Ha Noi today has nearly 2,500 taxies, but the authority didn't have to invest any capital in them. This is one success of transport socialization. Particularly to bus, our view is that public passenger transport is a special form with no direct profit for enterprises dealing in it. Therefore, the Government must take the major role in public passenger transport. Thus, during the stages of bus development, at a very low starting point, there must be a large SoEs taking the role, and once the proportion of public transport has been relatively significant and people have been used to using public transport modes, which is in our case buses, we move on to second step, that is expanding and developing for other sector to participate in public passenger transport. Therefore, in our policy, in 2001, we have merged 3 bus companies into 1 large and united company and initially, we had the ambition of making it a corporation as the corporation will have enough strength to take the key role in public passenger transport and at the same time, it can promote other forms of businesses to earn profits and use such profit to support the losses due to buses' frequency increase. That is the policy and steps.

　

And to lay the foundation for other sectors' participation into public passenger transport, we are now working on the following issues: firstly legal framework as other sectors, once participating in the business, must be granted with the incentives and priorities like SoEs, specifically we are proposing to the Government to exempt taxes on transporting vehicles such as vehicle import tax, special consumption tax and other taxes; and road tolls and other transport surcharges should also be prioritized to such sectors like SoEs; the third issue is also very important in my opinion, that is Government's co-subsidy to SoEs for losses compensation should also be granted equally to such sectors. We are studying the mechanism for this and propose to city municipal and the Government.

　

And the third point is the norms to calculate and pay subsidies accurately; we have to develop a system of norms on the basis of the criteria of vehicles system as well as the criteria of bus routes. And the last issue being studied on is the scenarios so that other sectors, once participating, can join the network system. Regarding this, we are having various scenarios and we are considering whether to select route tendering or route assigning for other sectors and how to improve the system of ticket distribution and subsidy. The second step is being studied and we really hope that researchers may join us so that public passenger transport can have the participation of many sectors, reducing the city's budget burden in vehicle investment and subsidy.

　

Ms. Phin: Yes, thank you Mr. Bui Xuan Dung. In fact, with Ha Noi's determination, in recent time, losses compensation for public passenger transport, especially buses, have amounted to dozens of billion dongs per year. And to reduce that loss for the city, recently, one of the city municipal's determinations is to socialize public passenger transport and the determination have been discussed by Mr. Dung via the policies and measures. Thank you, Mr. Bui Xuan Dung.

　

And now I would like to invite Doctor Cao Ngoc Chau from TDSI.

　

　

I would like to raise a question for Mr. Dung. As I am also a frequent passenger of buses, looking at your 2003 directions, I feel a little bit worried as at present, many routes, for example 32 route, with the frequency of 5 minutes/bus, many buses have ignored passengers. And buses, although at the frequency of 5 minutes/bus, have been very crowded, while in your 2003 plan, the maximum frequency is still 5 minutes/bus and no higher. In my opinion, in this way, on heavy routes such as 32, Gia Lam - Giap Bat, etc., more and more passengers shall be ignored at bus stops. Secondly, as you said in this presentation, I have got a rather different thinking. For example, you said that the categorization of 3 kinds of routes like this shall ensure waiting time of only 5-7 minutes on the whole network. If I have to take all 3 kinds of routes, I might have to wait altogether 25-30 minutes as on the first route, at the frequency of 5 minutes/bus, I will have to wait 2.5 minutes on average, and at second route, at the frequency of 10 minutes/bus at peak house, I will have to wait around 5 minutes on average and then when I change to third route, I will have to wait for 15 minutes more. So in my opinion, on such heavy routes as 32, if you keep the frequency of 5 minutes/bus, passengers shall stop using buses. And one more thing is during peak hours, we usually have to stand instead of sitting. And since the buses were designed for foreigners, the holding bars are rather high for Vietnamese passengers. So, if we stand and hold the bars, after around 20-30 minutes, our arms often get fatigue. In my opinion, there should also be some kinds of improvements regarding these problems.

　

Answer: As you have seen, buses operating results in 2001 was only 15.8 billion while in 2002, the revenue has increased by more than three times. It must be said that such growth is very encouraging, but also worrisome as it is known as a "hot growth", meaning management, operation and infrastructure system sometimes fail to catch up with such rapid growth. Back to the beginning, we didn't expect that the idea could be so quickly accepted. As you can see, at the beginning, with such number of vehicles and infrastructure, we operated only 400 buses, but the number has increased gradually every month and quarter from 314 buses. And the number of passengers, as seen from the chart, has also increased rapidly from 1.5 million passengers in January to nearly 10 million in December. Such increase is very rapid, which can be called as "hot growth". Therefore, in 2003, we are facing a challenge of either progress or lose everything. In fact, in 2002, we nearly worked as "purchasing bus using habit" to passengers. The Government has subsidized 57 million dong for 48.8 million passengers. As the fare is very low, trip fair is 2,500 dong/trip while commuter ticket is only 30,000 dong/month, inter-route tickets issued in October is only 45,000 - 60,000 dong/month and tickets for pupils and students is only 15,000 dong/month. It can be seen that Ha Noi is very determined in paying subsidies for bus passengers to buy their habit and the habit has been "purchased" quickly. But we are now worrying that with such rapid growth of passengers, if our services do not growth at that fast, meaning increasing the number of buses, passengers may abandon bus services.

　

And one more situation is that during peak hours, buses are overloaded with no more room for standing, for example, gamma ratio - bus utilizing ratio, which is ideally 0.8, increases to 1.3 or even 1.4 during peak hours. This has placed a challenge to us.

As I have said, from 2003 to 2007, we shall continue increasing bus capacity while waiting for rail transport. Rail transport is really wished for, but in my opinion, with regards to its feasibility concerning finance and time, until 2007, we will still rely mainly on bus transport. And the issue is how to improve bus capacity. There are some solutions as follows: firstly, increase hooked-buses as the consultant has just said. But in Ha Noi, hooked buses are impossible with its roads. So how to increase bus capacity? To increase bus frequency such as from 5 minutes/bus to 2 minutes/bus? This is also impossible as although frequency at bus stops is 5minutes/bus, in all route on one road, as we have calculated for road No 32 or road No 6, at each bus tops, the frequency now is 1.5 minute/bus for route-coinciding ratio. Therefore, for one single route, the frequency is 5 minutes but on the trunk, it is more than 1 minute. So we cannot increase buses now.

　

But the demand for bus services makes bus increase unavoidable. So how should buses be increased? Then we have developed a second alternative as I have presented - that is straight buses. Also on this 32 route, there is both normal bus at 5 minutes/bus, but there are also passengers who travel longer. So we are studying another type of bus, still 32 but express 32 for straight traveling. That is the idea, but we haven't been able to realize it as bus procuring is very slow. This year, we planed to purchase 320 buses and we expect that the buses shall only be available in the first quarter and will gradually increase until the forth quarter. And we are now very worried as in this first quarter, buses have already been overloaded since they sometimes have to ignore passengers to ensure safety. And presently, we have to increase buses' vehicle capacity; some buses on 32 route have reached an ideal level of nearly 300 km/day. We have also arranged garage regime. Everyday, buses, after entering the garage, shall be thoroughly examined and cleaned to be ready for the drivers in next days. So logistic must also keep with such rapid pace. And in my opinion, at this pace, we have to endeavor very much in the area of depot and garage system for vehicle maintenance, as with this capacity, by 2005, we will have to renovate new buses, so we have many areas to work on, firstly infrastructure, secondly organization and vehicle investment. And of course, by 2004, Ha Noi must consider building some bus-ways on some elevated trunks beyond second ring road for tram and elevated trams' access. So works must be very quickly executed to catch up with people's traveling demand or bus services might go down again. Regarding some other details such as unsuitable designs, we really appreciate such opinions so that we can order producers to improve. Thank you.