To spur students to use buses, the Management and Operation Center for Public Transport wants the city to increase ticket subsidizes this year to VND 3,968 per trip for intra-city travel and VND 4,587 in Can Gio district.
The current rates are VND 2,830 and VND 3,537.
Tran Chi Trung, the center’s director, said the higher subsidies would also encourage transport operators to buy new buses and improve their services.
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Students board a school bus in Ho Chi Minh City. |
Tran Quang Lam, deputy director of the Department of Transport, said the department has suggested that the city should provide interest-free loans for 10 years worth 70 percent of the cost of a bus to operators.
The department has worked with the Department of Education and Training to ensure traffic safety in school areas, especially during peak hours.
They also instructed transport enterprises to improve their services and increase their number of daily trips so that more students use public transport.
“Encouraging students to use public buses is a great way to reduce traffic jams and pollution in the city,” Lam said.
Last year 36,700 students traveled by bus while the city’s target had been 40,000.
The figure was 10 percent down from 2016.
Only 123 schools in 15 districts have signed agreements with bus operators to pick up and drop their students, and 71 percent of them are situated in outlying districts like Can Gio, Cu Chi, Hoc Mon, Binh Chanh, and Nha Be.
Trung said that in the inner city parents prefer to take their children to school since their homes are not far from school but quite far from main roads where the buses stop.
Source: VNA