Hanoi plans to offer 15-day free travel on first metro line
The Hanoi People’s Council has proposed 15 days of free travel after the first metro line opens.
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Hanoi's first metro line is set to run its first commercial trip in April 2019. Photo by VnExpress/Ngoc Thanh
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The city also plans to subsidize 50 percent of the monthly fare for students, workers from industrial parks, and senior citizens. Officials and employees working outside industrial zones would get a discount of 30 percent if they buy group monthly tickets.
Individual passengers can buy monthly season tickets for VND200,000 ($8.61) or daily tickets for VND30,000 ($1.29), both allowing unlimited trips. Single trips will cost from VND7,000-15,000 ($0.3-0.65) per person depending on the distance travelled.
Tickets can be paid for with cards or cash. Card payments will get discount of VND500 (2.2 cents) per single trip.
Although the price is higher than a bus ticket, the train runs twice as fast. From one end of the 13km Cat Linh – Ha Dong route to the other, the journey takes just 22 minutes, he said.
The route runs from Cat Linh Station in downtown Dong Da District to the Yen Nghia Station in the south-west Ha Dong District.
The Chinese contractor of the metro, China Railway Sixth Group Co., Ltd, plans to finish trial runs this month, and begin commercial operations in April.
However, according to a recent inspection by the Ministry of Transport, installation of devices and machinery on the metro line is only 90 percent complete.
Vu Hong Phuong, deputy director of the metro project, said several parts of the project, including sanitation, air conditioning, water supply system and drainage system in stations along the line have not been completed.
Hanoi, a city of more than 7.5 million people, has 5.2 million motorbikes and around 550,000 cars, besides some 1.2 million vehicles brought by non-residents, according to police figures.
