How will sunburned tourists get around?
According to Dan Tri, Hanoi officials are considering banning three-wheeled vehicles, including cyclos, from the city's increasingly congested streets.
The municipal Police Department estimates that 4,800 home-made three-wheeled vehicles currently roam the capital, roughly 1,300 of which are owned by veterans injured in war. The remainder, however, are driven by people thought to be pretending to be veterans, or by people transporting haphazardly stored construction equipment.
Such vehicles aren't safely built, and they aren't registered or checked for technical issues.
The potential ban is part of the Hanoi People's Committee revised regulations on transport operations on local streets. Authorities also want to lessen the environmental impact of vehicles as air quality continues to worsen.
The news source adds that the city government plans to provide jobs and support policies to veterans if the ban is implemented. However, it is less clear what would become of Hanoi's legions of cyclo drivers if the vehicles — once a popular way to get around and now mostly for tourists — are outlawed.
Back in June 2018, city officials announced that they would remove all unlicensed three-wheelers, however that has not taken place. Similar safety concerns were raised at the time, as these vehicles often carry long metal poles and other items that could seriously harm other motorists.
In 2017, VTV reported in Vietnamese that only 780 out of over 4,000 such machines were driven by actual veterans.
