To solve the problem of land shortage for traffic, Hanoi still has a lot of land from the relocation of state agencies and ministries, and polluting factories out of the inner city, Nghiem told VietnamNet.

He analyzed: Approximately VND9.000 billion (450 million) has been spent in Hanoi’s traffic planning, but the city still does not achieve the plan on traffic approved by the Prime Minister in 2009.

Under this plan, the area for traffic in urban areas must reach 20 – 25 percent of the total areas. Of which, there must be at least 30 percent of land for construction of static traffic, such as roads, pavements, parking lots, etc.

In Hanoi, land for static is only 10 percent compared to the standard, while the growth rate of vehicles is very high. The city now has 14 million motorcycles, more than 40,000 cars concentrated in the inner city. That does not count the number of vehicles from other provinces.

Architect Dao Ngoc Nghiem said that the capital city still lacks public space, green space, so the city should not build parking lots in parks and flower gardens or only develop underground car parks. However, investment in underground car parks will cost a lot of money and the ability to recover capital investment is slow.

Nghiem advocated that the relocation of state agencies and ministries as well as polluting factories from the inner city will help the city have an additional of hundreds of hectares of land for traffic. He suggested building car parks at these locations.

To solve the turbulent problem of urban traffic Nghiem said that Hanoi needs to perform many synchronous solutions.

The car park project in Thong Nhat Park (photo) is strongly criticized.

The first solution is restricting vehicles in the inner area. However, this solution should be taken towards improving the management role of state management agencies in the review of the outdated cars; setting conditions for new car registration in the urban districts, etc.

The second solution, according to Nghiem, is reorganizing traffic. Nghiem also proposed that Hanoi should limit the construction of high-rise buildings along streets so as not to hinder traffic visibility.

In terms of urban population distribution, Nghiem said that Hanoi will have to think about reducing the population in the inner city to the threshold of 800,000 - the number proposed in 1998 on the restriction of the population in urban areas from 960,000 to 800,000.

However, this proposal was not successfully realized when its urban population has increased to 1.2 million people.

Kien Trung