Building smart cities should be shown in all urban development planning, all urban development programs and projects.
dr. Nguyen Nhat Quang, vice chairman of the founding council of VINASA (Vietnam Software & IT Services), said a smart city is not a design that can be copied, but should be seen as an effective way to develop and run cities. .
Quang, who is a member of a group of experts – assistants to the National Committee for Digital Transformation, spoke with VietNamNet about the plan to levy tolls on vehicles entering certain areas of Hanoi to avoid the number of vehicles and reduce traffic congestion.
As a technology expert, what would you say about the plan to collect tolls from the vehicles entering the downtown area?
Each project should be placed in the overall development of Hanoi smart traffic system. Smart traffic solutions must be the effective combination of building solutions, technological solutions and management solutions. Individual technology initiatives are difficult to exploit and easy to fail.
Restricting vehicles entering a certain area basically means deliberately restricting socio-economic activities of the area. So, when comparing the benefits/costs of the project, it is necessary to also calculate the costs associated with the decline of socio-economic activities, not just the costs of installing and using technological systems.
What are other countries doing to reduce traffic congestion in inner cities like Hanoi?
The core solution is the development of public transport, which will make it play a key role in freight and passenger transport. In the current circumstances, it is necessary to develop a smart public transport system, in which all forms of public transport connect each other in real time, connecting stations, parking lots and travelers.
Digital technology now enables the development of such systems. If everything connects well, public transport will become more convenient. Then we can take additional measures that lead to an increase in the costs of using our own means of transport, such as tolls for vehicles entering the city centre. This method alleviates traffic jams, while reducing socio-economic activities in restricted areas.
In these countries, public transport systems operate according to fixed timetables. Passengers know exactly what time the buses they need will arrive and can therefore plan their journey.
But in Hanoi’s current circumstances, this is unfeasible.
However, if all modes of transport could connect in real time and provide information about their position, the system could better regulate the modes of transport and provide passengers with information about departure and arrival times. That may be enough for many passengers.
In terms of transport infrastructure, we can apply digital technologies with construction and management solutions to increase the efficiency of existing infrastructure. For example, Da Nang uses smart traffic lights to adjust the time to the actual traffic situation.
Hanoi is also restructuring the traffic organization at some points where regular traffic congestion occurs, such as the Nguyen Trai and Nga Tu So intersections.
What does Hanoi need to become a green, smart and modern city?
In my view, a smart city is a digitally transformed city, a green one.
The basic principle is that new construction must be ‘smart’ from the start, while the projects relating to upgrading and gentrification must contain smart content.
In a developing city, the ‘implantation’ of the ‘genes of smart’ by enacting planning, regulations and appropriate standards should ensure that the ‘smart parts’ in the city can ‘talk to each other’ to build a smart city. as a whole.
In other words, building smart cities should be shown in all urban development planning, all urban development programs and projects. It would be unreasonable for officials to plan and build a city that isn’t smart, and later call on digital technology experts to make the city smart.
Technologically speaking, the implementation of initiatives to use digital technology could have certain effects in the short term. However, if the apps can’t connect to each other and data can’t be shared, the effects won’t be big enough and won’t last.
By Trong Dat @ vietnamnet
