In 2018, Hoi An announced that it had officially launched a project to establish a bicycle network to make transport more sustainable.
The project received VND4.1 billion in funding from the German government after it won an award for transformative urban mobility solutions organized by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.
While the public bicycle transport network idea has achieved success in Hoi An, in cities such as Saigon and Hanoi, similar projects are struggling to show results. According to VietnamNet, in the last two years, pilot projects for public bicycles have been carried out in Quang Trung Software Park (QTSC) and the HCMC National University (VNU), both in Saigon.
Although the experiment at the Quang Trung Software Park has received some positive feedback, VNU's program, titled Easy Move, failed to recruit users. Easy Move is an e-bike rental system that costs VND30,000 per month.
In Hanoi, a similar project was initiated at four universities in 2014. The renting fee for a bike ranges from VND150,000 to VND200,000 a month. After four years, the project also failed to attract users.
“It would be delusional to think that bicycles can replace motor vehicles in large cities such as Hanoi and HCMC, but it would be realistic to build up networks on a small or medium scale in certain areas,” Nguyen Minh Hoa from the HCMC University of Social Sciences and Humanities told VietnamNet.
