>> A bus is hard to catch in the capital
The majority of public bus passengers in Hanoi said the service is not really good mainly due to behaviour of divers and drivers’ assistants.
Bad service
On August 19, the municipal Department of Transport held a meeting to seek methods to improve the quality of public bus service.
Weaknesses
Nguyen Hoang Hai, Director of the Hanoi Urban Transport Management and Operation Centre, said that the centre has dealt with nearly 1,200 cases in which buses violated traffic safety regulations since the beginning of this year.
In the first half of the year, the city recorded 18 traffic accidents, and nearly 100 cases of violating traffic violations involving public buses, Hai said.
A recent survey showed that 65% of passengers surveyed complained about busses not arriving on time, while 16% said that drivers and their assistants do not behave properly. 4% complained about careless driving.
Stricter punishments
Nguyen Hoang Linh, Deputy Director said that this type of behaviour from drivers and their assistants has discouraged people from taking public transport. He added that these has caused several accidents.
He shared that many bus drivers do not cooperate with inspectors during inspections. Some of them even hired people to attack their supervisors.
In order to deal with the problems, Manh proposed that the department conduct a study of all bus lines to avoid the overlap that adds to traffic congestion. More bus routes should be added to outlying districts to encourage a larger number of people to use public transport, he said.
In the meanwhile, Linh proposed that authorities should coordinate with each other to tighten control over the quality of public buses, and to apply stricter punishments to employees who violate the rules. In the worst cases, the driver\'s license would be revoked and they would not be allowed to operate public buses.
“The city spends VND1 trillion (USD48,508) on public buses every year", he noted.
Route information hard to come by
Possible rise in bus fares
The department’s Director Nguyen Thi Ha Ninh proposed an increase in public bus fares in order to reduce municipal government\'s subsidy.
Currently, fees for public buses are VND3,000-VND5,000 for daily fares, and VND50,000-VND80,000 (USD1.42-USD3.8) for monthly passes.
