The Directorate for Roads of Vietnam under the Ministry of Transport will classify the quality of passenger transport services in an effort to reduce traffic accidents.
The directorate said it was compiling a project on the comprehensive reform of road transport management to develop management solutions in order to mitigate traffic accidents and improve the quality of transport services.
Under the project, passenger coach services on fixed routes or those implemented under contract will be classified into five grades, ranging from one to five stars on the scale of 100 points.
The service by bus will be divided into two grades of two and three stars, while taxis will be rated on three, four and five stars.
Road transport services have rapidly developed in recent years. The number of vehicles registered for business activities have increased 10 fold over the past decade. Currently, the country has around 103,000 coaches, 620,000 trucks, 2,681 transport enterprises and 586 cooperatives which provide road transport services. Most of them are small scale.
Up to 60% of transport service providers operate fixed routes and nearly 83% offer the services under contract. However, management capacity remains limited. Poor quality services and under-skilled employees have been blamed for a high number of traffic accidents.
