HCM City authorities have assigned relevant agencies to work out a time-based fee scheme for cars that park along roads and sidewalks.

Is Electronic Road Pricing the solution for HCM City gridlock?

Research of car fee collection in HCM City’s centre goes ahead

HCMC seeks gov’t permission for road price scheme

The longer cars park, the higher the parking fee. Revenues will be invested in the city’s transport infrastructure.

Area Departments of Finance and Transport and related agencies will submit plans to the HCM City People’s Committee for approval in August 2010. The city then will ask the permission of the Ministry of Finance to collect parking fees.

HCM City officials believe that this will help reduce gridlock. The city presently has more than 400,000 cars, equivalent to one tenth of the number of registered motorbikes, and the autos use over 50 percent of the space on roadways and 60 percent of parking lot space.

In late 2009, HCM City introduced its idea to collect fees from cars coming into the city’s centre by using an automatic system called Electronic Road Pricing (ERP).

ERP is already employed by many big cities as an effective measure to control the circulation of vehicles and to curb traffic jams. It also contributes to reducing exhaust fumes.

HCM City plans to apply Singapore’s ERP system on a trial basis. Drivers purchase cards at banks and then charge their cards via ATMs. When cars pass through ERP points, fee collecting transponders on their vehicles will automatically deduct money. If the cards don’t have enough value or cars don’t have transponders, cameras at ERP points will film the cars and send pictures to the control centre.

This technology easily helps to control cars, according to transportation analysts. Best of all, ERP systems can be fine-tuned to the requirements of any time of the day.

PV