VietNamNet Bridge – The Ha Noi People's Committee plans to add thousands of taxis to operate in outlying areas of the city to meet the increasing demand.

The number of taxis in the inner city will remain unchanged.

This is part of a project to promote taxi management until 2015 with a vision to 2030, which has been approved by city authorities.

Specifically, the city will add 8,000 taxis in the outlying districts of Dong Anh and Soc Son in the next eight years, raising the total number of vehicles to 25,000 by 2020.

The number of taxis is expected to increase to 30,000 in the next ten years. Currently, there are about 17,400 taxis operating in Ha Noi.

The municipal Department of Transport has built a roadmap to improve the service quality of taxis. All taxis will be required to install automatic fare machines with receipts and global positioning systems by 2015. Taxi stations will also be built to pick up passengers at crowded places such as trading centres, hospitals and bus stations in the next three years.

At least 50 per cent of the total number of taxis will be encouraged to use clean fuel and accommodate people with disabilities by 2030.

However, the project has received many opposals from transport experts. Chairman of the Ha Noi Transportation Association Bui Danh Lien told the Tien Phong (Vanguard) newspaper that it was unnecessary to increase the number of taxis as 17,400 was too much for the city.

"Roads are still substandard and have yet to match the city's development. More taxis will make the traffic worse and more chaotic," he said.

Figures from the Transport Development and Strategy Institute under the Ministry of Transport showed that the density of taxis in the inner city was rather crowded with about 52 taxis operating in each square kilometre of road on average. In key intersections such as Tran Duy Hung-Lang, Nga Tu Vong and Hai Ba Trung-Phan Boi Chau, half of the cars were taxis at peak hours.

Hong Kong and Beijing were reported to have 12 and 5 taxis per square kilometre, respectively.

Do Quoc Binh, Chairman of the Ha Noi Taxi Association, said that the project was totally contrary to the city's efforts to promote public transport.

It would also create more competitiveness among taxi companies who were already trying to keep fares down, despite rising petrol prices.

VietNamNet/VNS