Hanoi Vice Chairman Nguyen The Hung has asked related agencies to deal with congestion hot spots to reduce traffic jams to less than 30 minutes in 2019.

Traffic jam in Hanoi

It is part of the plan to tighten traffic safety and reduce congestion in Hanoi in 2019.

The local authorities set the goal to reduce the number of road traffic accidents by 5-10% compared to 2018, deal with 8 to 10 congestion hot spots, prevent new congested areas from being created and reduce traffic jams to less than 30 minutes.

In order to meet the goals, Hanoi authorities will speed up infrastructure projects at the hot spots including the expansion to Lang Street, Nguyen Trai and Tran Phu. Congestion hot spots caused by infrastructure projects must be quickly dealt with.

Hanoi Department of Transport were asked to tighten monitoring and work with the police to punish violators via CCTV. Statistics from the department show that in the first six months, 643 road accidents occurred, killing 248 and injuring 443 people. By the end of July, three out of 37 congestion hot spots were dealt with.

Congestion in Hanoi is worsening and local authorities have sought several measures such as developing minibuses and proposing the ban on motorbikes in the inner city.

Pham Hoai Chung, director of the Transport and Development Strategy Institute, announced in October that Hanoi is losing over 1 million working hours and USD1-1.2bn a year due to traffic congestion. Warnings over public health because of worsening air pollution problem was also raised.

Dtinews