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Hanoi Plan To Ban Motorbikes By 2030 To Combat Pollution (bbc.com)
Hanoi -- a city of five million motorbikes -- is planning to ban the popular two-wheeled transport by 2030. From a report: The city council voted for the ban almost unanimously, hoping to unclog roads and reduce soaring levels of pollution. The council has also promised to increase public transport so that half the population are using it by 2030, instead of the current 12 percent. But some residents think it very unlikely the bikes will go for good. Council officials decided to put "immediate management measures" in place after a report found the number of motorbikes in Hanoi was set to grow at an "alarming" rate. Some studies suggest there are already as many as 2,500 motorbikes per kilometre. According to the non-governmental group GreenID, the city recorded 282 days of "excessive" levels of PM2.5, which is harmful to human health, last year.
One day, editors will catch their mistakes before posting. Or I'll RTFM and see if the mistake is in the source. But that day is not today. Well done, editors!
It's the trucks and cars. Encourage motorcycles and scooters, they are much more environmentally friendly, you can pack 6 of them on the road compared to every car, and are extremely low cost so they promote upward mobility of most workers, since they can now commute a fair distance to jobs (not just stuck in their own little village or district).
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
How hard is it to do a simple proofread of the summary before posting it? Its equivalent to brain surgery apparently.
I see a lot about electric cars, and also electrically assisted bicycles, but not much about fully electric motorbikes. Too small to fit enough batteries in? Safety issues regarding not being able to shield the batteries from impact in the event of a crash? I would have thought a lightweight, two wheeled vehicle would actually be a good candidate for electric power.
The free market interprets government interference as damage and routes around it.
Alternatives will appear, the question is if they will be better or worse alternatives, because the free market doesn't really care if the solution to the damage is better or worse, just that it exists. For a negative example, see prohibition of drugs in the USA. And for a "positive" example, see Kei cars in Japan.
If you have a time machine.
Motorbites/cycles use less energy than cars so if reducing pollution was really the goal, start with cars, which are the largest offenders. I suspect that a ban on cars would hurt a lot more economic interests. If so, this is just a political PR piece to tell the world, "see we are doing something".
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
there is a lot of hate for motorcycles. Been hit and run twice, and both times witnesses refused to tell on the car driver. Also, people here in Seattle constantly knock over motorcycles. They assume I'm one of those Republicans since their kind is usually the only ones hateful enough to have one of those things. I am not. I got it for free, and like normal people, I can't afford a car.
Thing one: Government plans to convert people to mass transit often, historically, fall well short of expectation. Thing two: Banning motorcycles will cause an inevitable upsurge in car ownership. It won't be 1:1 of course, but people and things gotta move and life finds a way. The most probable result will be an increase in pollution and even more packed roads.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Have gnu, will travel.
Banning motorcycles is just stupid. For one-person transportation, a modern motorcycle emits less than half of what a modern car does (per person). Even with NO pollution controls, like an ancient design, a typical motorcycle will emit less than a modern car.
Perhaps make it illegal to drive ancient motorcycles without modern pollution controls?
Also, motorcycles take up less parking, less space on the roads, and are almost no wear on the roads.
"I won't be able to drive my bike in 2030? That's hanoi-ing."
#DeleteFacebook
I know for a fact that electric bike technology has made significant strides in the last decade. Isn't that a solution they should look at?
Not all mbikes!
Those burn lubricant oil along with the fuel.
Four strokes engines are much cleaner and help keeping the traffic low, so also help against pollution.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
It seems to me this one has a very simple solution.
Offer a significant tax incentive to exchange or refit your two-stroke or older four-stroke scooter/motorcycle to electric.
Electric scooters are awesome. They're reliable, cheap, and in some cases, less polluting than simply walking to your destination (assuming a Western diet, anyway).
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
You should really re-read your comment and understand how sick in the head you are. You think hurting some because they disagree with about tax code is ok. There is a word for people like you and those around you. Let's just say you have a great deal in common with a guy named Adolf.
Never been to Hanoi, don't wanna go. But if you Google Earth at the street level view you will see some interesting tidbits.
1) The motorbikes are at minimum fairly modern, not "ancient" at all. Not easily identifiable as 2 or 4 stroke to my untrained eye, but most have a tail light, which is one of the first things that gets broken on a bike, which means they are decently new.
2) The overhead situation is not going to be easily overcome. A zillion trees overhanging the streets and a billion trillion random electrical lines.
3) A big bus, not the nuclear kind, is going to have a hard time traversing a majority of Hanoi.
Good luck to Hanoi, it isn't going to be a cakewalk.
Caution: Contents under pressure
Has anyone followed the money on this one?
Because it looks to me like a ploy to increase the prevalence of cars, which are of course much bigger polluters than the worst tuned motorcycles.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Why not simply ban Crap bikes that dont have fuel injection and a Catalytic converter? Modern bikes (if you have carbs your bike is NOT modern, even if you bought it new in 2017) do not pollute very much at all because they now use decent engine systems.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
They should see what is happening in China first. Many Chinese cities had a very high usage rate of electric scooters. Very practical transport for flat cities that provide lanes for them and a potential pollution free option. Interestingly there is a movement there away from scooters to cars. When the weather is ok the scooters are a more practical solution being cheaper and faster, but in the case of China the movement to using cars is a status thing, not about what is best but what impresses others more. As a result some cities that had free flowing traffic 5 years ago are now gridlocked much of the day.
Translate that to the Hanoi situation and try and imaging 2500 cars per km! Of course Hanoi is not China and I suspect few people will be able to afford the cost step from a motorcycle to a car. Regardless it is a trend in the wrong direction. The better option would be to ban the new sales of 2 stroke motorcycles now then force the transition from petrol to electric over a period of time. The irony here is the bulk of commuters will likely switch from petrol to electric, simply because of the advantages, over the next few years. For example a few years ago in China I could buy an electric scooter for USD $400 (500W) or a 125cc motorcycle (5KW) for $1200. For the average commuter in a Chinese city it makes little difference. Now in China I have found you can buy more conventional electric motorcycle (1.2KW) for $1000. In my book that means for city commuters electric motorcycles are close to parity with petrol ones in cost and performance today.
No need for a well intentioned but short sighted law change.
That'll help much more!
I lived there a year, and left due to traffic, and traffic noise. Pollution is bad, not not much worse than most other asian cities. The biggest problem for me is the slash and burn agriculture which puts a haze over the entire region.
The bikes are almost exclusively 4 stroke, Honda Dream, Honda Wave, 100-110cc over 175 cc you get a special 200% tax, yes the big bikes then cost 3x as much! Some Suzikis and yamahas, but many parts are interchangable. There is the odd old Russian Minsk, and those are foul.. but those are mostly used in the mountains and by dumb-ass tourists.. Sometimes an old Honda Chaly mini-bike with a 50 cc but really, 99% 4 STROKE.
Post after post after post, THEY ARE 4 STROKE!
The law is a weapon of the government, not a protection for the likes of you. Surely you understand that.
When pollution gets too much, blame the little people and force them to make the sacrifices, instead of holding the big industry polluters responsible, who make the vast majority of all pollution, atmospheric and other kinds.
I live in Vietnam so here are some facts:
The motorbikes in Vietnam are almost all 4-strokes and remarkably efficient at speeds around 40 Km/h which is the typical city speed limit.
New Honda scooters have automatic stop/start when idling at traffic lights.
Accelerating and decelerating a lower mass wastes less energy than a car.
Motorcycles use vastly less space than a car and can use all the narrow streets not available to fatter vehicles. Hanoi has many homes with only a single access by a narrow track.
The thousands of cars already in Hanoi already cause a disproportionate amount of congestion because they are not fluid like the bikes and regularly cause deadlocks at junctions and roundabouts even without traffic lights.
There is no way in Hell that Hanoi motorcycle users can -ever- change to cars - do not think about that! There is no parking, the roads are too narrow and there would be too much congestion.
The existing road vehicles (Diesel trucks, buses, and cars and motorbikes) cause much pollution but barbecues cause plenty too.
Low performance (45 Km/h maximum speed) electric mopeds/motorbikes are available with satisfactory lead acid batteries for VND 9 million (USD 395) which is half the price of a normal new motorbike and they can travel 50 to 70 Km so can replace motorbikes for nearly all commuter journeys.
Most buses in Vietnam are not pleasant or rapid urban transit and do not have any special lanes or privileges on the roads.
Vietnam has just introduced a feed in tariff for local solar power generation on people's homes so the tiny amount of electricity needed for an electric motorbike can be generated by a single solar panel.
There is a totally obvious extant solution to Hanoi's problem: electric motorbikes/mopeds so the actual question that should be asked instead is why will car taxes be reduced and motorbikes banned. The answer may not be obvious to someone who lives in a normal democratic country. The thing to know is the Communist government leaders and their rich business friends all drive cars and live in Hanoi. It is the same situation as Yangon in Myanmar where the military ran the government and drove cars but now we have cheap, fast efficient electric bikes so the real motivation is even clearer.
Everyone's focusing on the headline, but there is another reason to want to replace motorbikes with public transport: congestion. Every image of modern-day Hanoi I've seen has roads jammed solid with motorbikes, 5 across in each lane. Replacing motorbikes with cleaner motorbikes won't solve that.
maybe by 2030 half of those councilmen are in jail for corruption, it wouldnt be so uncommon,
so i think imma put this piece of "news" in the basket of "we are getting to mars in 2018" along with "there will be no more regular cars in 2023, just electric ones"
Mythbusters? Is that the show where they would test a bunch of stuff, and then all of the viewers would write in and point out all of the holes in their testing methods?
Yeah, not sure I'd put too much stock in their results.
But, hey, that's just me.
What if they just ban every other motor bike the first day, and then three out of four in the first week...
The sidewalks are also overflowing with people driving motos during rush hour!
Traffic is jammed, OOH, there's a nice place I can drive..
Non-Rush hour, the sidewalks are used for parking the motos. Or for portable shops selling whatever, although the local Cong Anh (police without guns, vs the Army ones with guns..) are forcing out the vendors now in bigger cities. Many stories in the news about the 70 yr old illiterate peasant woman who can not sell coffee any more from her coal brasier/plastic chairs and a small table streetside shop.
The law is a weapon of the government, not a protection for the likes of you. Surely you understand that.
They do not "Hate". They simple do not care. It does not cross their minds.
In the west do you grieve for the bugs splattered on your windshield? Probably not..
Peasants defer to the wealthy. Wealthy defer to the govt. You are expected to fit yourself into this hierarchy and KNOW YOUR PLACE. If you get hit, YOUR FAULT. Should not have been doing that..
Employees defer to the boss. Period. If you act western, as an equal etc. you cause he boss to lose face. You will not be employed for long!
Do not impose your views or social standards, or ideas of equality. They have their own way, and do not want to be preached to. It works for them, violence is low, things are very peaceful if you go with the flow.
Do not JUDGE!
The law is a weapon of the government, not a protection for the likes of you. Surely you understand that.