Tran Thi Phuong Lan, vice director of the department, said that the city wants to tighten the transportation of building materials to construction sites. Therefore, trucks carrying building materials must be cleaned before entering the city. 
 
She said that measures to curb air pollution in the city are urgent, as concentration of pollutants including CO2, CO, SO2 or NOx on roads are reportedly well above the permitted levels.

The concentration of dirt on roads was twice or four times higher than permitted. Hanoi takes in about 80,000 tonnes of dirt yearly.

According to the department’s review, the city has 497 filling stations with an area of less than 400 sq.m each, 164 stations with an area of 400-900 sq.m each and 67 stations with an area of over 900 sq.m each.

According to the city’s planning until 2020 with a vision towards 2030, only filling stations which have an area of over 900 sq.m each are qualified to offer car wash services.

The stations are also required to be on national highways or major roads that lead to the city centre.

However, qualified stations are not available in some national highways or major roads, for example, National Highway 21B running through Thanh Oai district, National Highway 18 in Soc Son district or National Highway 5 running through Gia Lam district.

Lan said that car washes at filling stations are popular in other countries like the US, Italy, China and the Republic of Korea.

She said the municipal People’s Committee assigned the department to review the filling station network in the city and recommend possible locations to install automatic are wash systems.

The automatic car wash systems would serve oversized trucks and bid coaches.

The department will ask People’s Committees at districts and towns to cooperate in identifying possible locations for car wash systems.

Since 2005, few car wash systems have been built at entrances to the city to prevent trucks from bringing dust to the city centre.

VNA