Cleaning up Vietnam’s Masses of Motorcycles
EMBARQ researchers help city officials with 'emissions inventory' of country's two-wheeler fleet
Wednesday, October 15, 2008 | Hanoi, Viet Nam
Motorcycles ply the streets of Hanoi. 84% of all households in the city own a motorized two-wheeler.
Over the last several decades, motorcycle use in Vietnam has skyrocketed, increasing a staggering 545% between 1995 and 2005. Like other cities in Vietnam and across Asia, motorcycles are now the dominant mode of urban transport in the Vietnamese capital. Given their ubiquity, motorcycles and other two-wheelers are also large contributors to Vietnam’s increasing traffic and urban air pollution woes. But according to EMBARQ researchers, motorcycles might actually be part of the solution – provided they become cleaner and more efficient.
For over four years, EMBARQ has been working with Vietnamese officials to reduce its transport-related emissions (see links to EMBARQ’s work in Vietnam below). In the most recent phase of this collaboration, EMBARQ and the Swiss Foundation for Technical Cooperation organized an all-day symposium that presented techniques for measuring and mitigating air pollution from motorcycles. With representatives from major cities across Vietnam attending, EMBARQ researchers Dr. Lee Schipper and Dr. Alper Unal described the components of an “emissions inventory” and gave an overview of the successful inventory that the EMBARQ team recently completed in Istanbul, Turkey. The City of Istanbul's own Nizamettin Mangir was also on-hand to provide insights on the city’ administration's participation in the project, and on its use of the inventory findings to begin to reduce emissions in the Turkish megalopolis.
A key message of the event was that while motorcycles and other two-wheelers are clearly causing dirtier air and more congested streets, improving the motorcycle fleet might be preferable to simply replacing it with personal automobiles. According to Dr. Schipper, cleaner, better-maintained motorcycles, would use less energy, take up less space, and create fewer emissions than would the same number of cars.
By conducting an emissions inventory of its two-wheeler fleet using EMBARQ’s model, Vietnamese cities are poised to begin to reconcile the desire for increased economic growth with the need for clean air and navigable streets.
Dr. Schipper went on to note, however, that even with cleaner motorcycles, Vietnamese cities like Hanoi will face serious traffic problems if they do not implement strong measures to control traffic speeds, enforce safety rules, charge for parking, implement congestion charging schemes, and above all, protect pedestrians and cyclists – who are being steadily forced off the streets as two-wheelers become the dominant mode of transport.
More EMBARQ Research and News on Vietnam: