Transcript: Motorbike madness in Vietnam

Transcript: Motorbike madness in Vietnam, with Arve Hansen and Hue-Tam Jamme.

Opener  (00:00:02) 

This is the Nordic Asia podcast.

Arve Hansen  (00:00:09)  

Welcome to the Nordic Asia podcast, a collaboration sharing expertise in Asia across the Nordic Region. My name is Arve Hansen. I'm a researcher at the Center for development and the environment at University of Oslo, and leader of the Norwegian network for Asian Studies. I'm here today with Hue-Tam Jamme, Assistant Professor at the School of Geographical Sciences and urban planning, Arizona State University. She is also a leading expert on urban mobility in Vietnam, and last year defended her impressive PhD thesis: "Productive frictions and urbanism in transition. Planning lessons from traffic flows and urban street life in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Now, I happen to have quite an interest in this topic myself, but focusing on Hanoi instead of Ho Chi Minh City. And ever since we Hue-Tam as a speaker in a webinar on sustainable urban mobility in Vietnam, organized by the Norwegian network in June, I really looked forward to discussing this more in depth. So, welcome to the Nordic Asia podcast.

Hue-Tam Jamme  (00:01:12) 

Thank you for having me.

Arve Hansen  (00:01:13) 

I once met a young Vietnamese researcher visiting Norway who complained that tourists would come to his country to take photos of traffic. What is it about traffic and mobility in Vietnam that is so fascinating you think?

Hue-Tam Jamme  (00:01:28) 

I love this question. I love this researchers reaction. I think there's a lot to disentangle here. You know, in this statement that a Vietnamese researcher would complain that tourists take photos of traffic. The first thing for sure is fascination. There is something fascinating about traffic in Vietnamese cities, I mean, starting with how dense it is, at the time when I when I was doing my fieldwork in Ho Chi Minh City in 2018. You know, we were talking about the city of 8 million people with 8 million motorbikes circulating. And men, women, children, the elderly, handicapped people who you know, like customize motorbikes. So that they enable mobility basically, for everyone at this point, in libraries, you can find so many books, you know, have pictures of motorbikes carrying all sorts of things. And that is still the case, I mean, less and less as the country is modernizing, but motorbikes with hundreds of chicken on it, and then a construction material, or all sorts of thing that are circulating in the streets. And you have like this constant flow, I think that is the fascinating part. There's something a little hypnotizing about watching this flow, like a flock of fish basically, circulating through the streets. So I think I can see how that is a memorable experience, just like crossing traffic is a memorable experience that most tourists come back, you know, from Vietnam, sharing this experience, how do I cross the street when the flow basically never stops and just dodges around you as you cut through it. So I can see how that is fascinating. I think it speaks to the fact that there's something cultural about mobility. In my work, I refer to this very idea, you know, of it as a transportation signature. The idea that Motorbikes are to Vietnamese cities, what gondolas are to Venice. The second thing I find interesting in this statement is that the researcher would complain, like, why would they complain? What is wrong about making this impression on people who come visit Vietnam? And to me, it speaks to this question that, yeah, I guess Vietnamese people would like to be known for something else. But you know, if we refer to this transportation, signature idea, I mean, people take pictures of gondolas as well, they pay to get on the gondolas. So I think that's something that there's no problem like with taking pride in the dominant form of mobility as a cultural aspect. And finally, you know, this notion of like not being so proud of what it is, to me, it speaks to something else I covered in this dissertation, like about the conceptions of what mobility should be like, especially mobility of the future. And something I heard from local officials in Ho Chi Minh City, so like, someone said this is not what the modern city looks like. So these motorbikes flocking through the city that tourists would take pictures of this is not what the modern city looks like. And something I found especially interesting is that even the people who depend on also people of all ages, again of all social classes and backgrounds, they seem to have internalized this conception that the modern does not look like this, that having so many motorbikes on the street is somewhat backward. And to me this is the wrongest way of looking at this very prominent cultural feature.

Arve Hansen  (00:05:11)  

I've heard the same many times. And it is also of course, showing in urban authorities plans of banning motorbikes in cities. We'll have to speak more about the future of mobility in Vietnam as well. But I fully agree with what you're saying. I think one of my favorite pastime activities in any Vietnamese city is sitting down on a street corner with a cup of coffee and just watching traffic. And I would never do that. In Oslo where I live, for example.

Hue-Tam Jamme  (00:05:37) 

I was happy to see once and maybe it is sort of a turn, you know, but I guess it was an article from Tuoi Tre or some other large Vietnamese newspaper back a couple of years ago. You know how motorbike taxi drivers, who are another prominent feature of Vietnamese street life, with motorbike taxi drivers for the longest time they were just waiting at every single cross street basically waiting for customers and reading the newspaper while lying on their motorbikes and and now that you have all these apps coming like grab and all of these, this entire industry overnight basically was taken over by those shared mobility apps. Now I remember once seeing in that newspaper an article saying that, the question was: is Ho Chi Minh City losing its motorbike culture? Because the motorbike taxi drivers were not on the streets anymore. It's recent. It was the first time I saw some form of official governmental news refer to a motorbike culture and I think there is some.

Arve Hansen  (00:06:46)  

Yeah, cause the motorbike has come to mean a lot. I had another young Vietnamese once telling me that the motorbike is to the Vietnamese has the horses are to a Mongolian. And many do take pride in that you know, that any Vietnamese know how to drive a motorbike I've heard that statement. Often you don't need a license like you know it from birth, more or less. For the motorbike has a deep cultural role, I think in not only in Vietnam, but there is a special role in Vietnam that you don't see many other places. I think, obviously also in the past few years, or the past decade or more, perhaps cars have been challenging this dominance. And there are more and more and more cars on the street as well. They are doing something to traffic. Transport experts and policymakers and everyone sort of expected that by now Vietnamese cities should be car dominated, not motorbike dominated, but the motorbike is resilient. I saw reports from from some years ago that the Ministry of Transportation had this plan that there should be something like 30 million motorbikes in Vietnam by 2020. And there's now 58 million, is the last number I saw of motorbikes in the country. So things haven't really gone according to plan you could say.

Hue-Tam Jamme  (00:08:03)  

I mean, when it comes to the car, the government made the biggest shift as well. Somewhat recently, like 2015 marked the turn from very restrictive import taxes, that was specifically aimed at limiting the number of cars on the streets, because authorities knew very well that the street network cannot accommodate that many cars like the streets are really narrow. What is it, something like 85% of all streets in Ho Chi Minh City are alleyways that are barely wide enough for a motorbike to pass. So given the state of the infrastructure, there were very strict limitations on car imports, at a time when Vietnam did not have a car maker. So you know for a Toyota, you would pay $15,000 in the United States, you would pay $30,000 in Vietnam where incomes are much lower. And 2015 mark this shift from the Vietnamese government at national level decided that the car industry, car manufacturing, would become a central piece in the national development strategy of the country. The carmaker now exists, it's called Vinfast, they launched the very first two Vinfast cars at the Paris Motor Show in 2018. And now there is an impetus, there is a push, a top down push coming from the government to ancorage the car to become a consumption good, just like it has in other modern societies. So something has changed as well. In the plan, the plan change quite abruptly actually.

Arve Hansen  (00:09:42)  

There's a motorbike culture as you said, but also, and I know both of us have a special interest in this. The relationship between the motorbike and the rest of the city, of course everyday life but also the very infrastructure of the city. And I think you have a great concept in your PhD thesis that you call this 'productive friction'? Can you explain what productive friction is?

Hue-Tam Jamme  (00:10:07) 

I think you should start by telling us more about what, you know, your concept of the system of motomobility, I think it comes first in a sense. And I explained how this idea I came up with later, you know, building on your work. So how it connects to this system of mobility that you described in your earlier work.

Arve Hansen  (00:10:31) 

That's generous of you and I, I promised the listeners I didn't plan on that. The system of motor mobility is building on the now late John Urry's work and his work on the system of automobility. And his work focuses on the car and how it depends on a very large system that is self reinforcing. And he wrote about infrastructure and culture and everything that surrounds the car from all the road networks, the gas stations, the supermarkets and shopping malls, and different forms of car culture and going on car holidays, and, and everything, basically, and this is the system of automobility. But then I reacted, because he also says that something about the frictionless journey with a car is something that is unmatched by any other forms of mobility. And this, to me fits into a larger trend in basically all of academia, but also, rather surprisingly, in this big mobilities field: that almost everyone ignores the motorbike. And it's quite obvious that to millions and millions and millions of people, it's the motorbike and not the car that represents that kind of flexibility. And from my own work, I see that actually, the motorbike is more flexible, in many ways, maybe not long distances, but the sort of mobility levels, the getting from A to B in Hanoi, which is such a densely populated city. It's actually, you know, the time you spend in traffic, it's actually surprisingly little compared to many other places where there's so many people living together. And that is much thanks to the motorbike, and especially in a context where there isn't much public transport. And what I basically realized was that actually, there is a system of motomobility in Hanoi and other Vietnamese cities that in similar ways, the car in John Urry's concept, everything is built around a motorbike. And it started with the bicycle, I think, and infrastructure has developed alongside two wheelers. So as you mentioned, such large parts of Vietnamese cities are actually consist of narrow alleyways where you cannot get a car, and you can with a motorbike, just like you could with the bicycle. So that's the very infrastructure is built around it. But also in terms of, for example, parking, there's no parking for cars. Still, you can can drive more or less from door to door anywhere in these extremely large cities. And this is just something extremely fascinating to me. And also, I think it to me was a sort of realization, I actually set out to study the emerging automobility, I set out to study the car, and I was driving around on a motorbike and I suddenly realized that actually, this is the most important, this is the most interesting part. It's actually this, this motorbike society, system of motomobility then goes from the large infrastructure and motorbike industry in Vietnam, which is also very big, and down to the small details, like this mini ramp that allows you to drive the motorbike inside the living room. So that's a rather long answer. But that's to me what what the system of motor mobility is.

Hue-Tam Jamme  (00:13:50) 

But I think it is exactly the right order because I do draw on the work of people like John Urry and others this system of auto mobility and all that, you know. They have found it together this new mobilities paradigm, which is, like you just said, so they focus on the car, because this is what they were faced with, immersed in, you know, in Western society. But this very notion that one dominant form of transportation and all the infrastructure and all the political economy that supports it, very much shapes social relations in the city, and the relationships between. So they are sociology, so they are interested in the politics of mobility. And I think it's very relevant to make the case that in another society, another form of dominant transportation, the motorbike in the case of Vietnamese cities, plays a similar role in shaping society. In my work, I draw on this new mobilities paradigm as well. This notion of productive friction, that is the theoretical model contribution from my PhD dissertation also speaks to the notion of social relations. But what I'm mostly interested in is those most fleeting social relations, like the social interactions that happen that take place in public space between strangers, semi strangers that will simply gaze at each other, or maybe engage in a very, you know, shorten casual interaction as they go about their daily business. But the notion of productive frictions, I defined it as the the opportunities for inclusive social interactions that are permitted by the contact of the flow of movement with the built environment as it goes through it. And I made the case that motorbike mobility is especially conducive to productive frictions, in the sense that when you look at the transportation flow, like the flow of motorbikes through the city, for reasons like the one you mentioned, have that flexibility that enables people to stop on a whim, to buy something on the way without even getting off the motorbike. They just pause for say five minutes, they step down, they step one foot down, they buy something from a vendor, and they keep going. This flexibility, this ability to park in very tight spaces, the ability to see and smell everything that is available to them, you know, in this environment that is extremely busy. Other scholars who are public space scholars have paid attention to the public spaces of Vietnamese cities, specifically for their very vibrant feel. There's so much going on 1000s of people just hanging out eating drinking tea, and interacting with friends or strangers and street vendors. Like the importance of street vendors, as contributors to this very active street life. And also the importance of street vending, as street vending is the very first step for most rural urban migrants to make their way into the city. So in my work, when I was doing my fieldwork, I conducted interviews with daily, you know, users as motorbike users. I conducted interviews with street vendors as well. And I recorded street life in many different types of streets like 333 videos of street lights and traffic. And basically, to summarize is that street vending, starting with this very essential activity, street vending basically, would not be possible without the motorbike. Not to that extent. And all of the social interactions that street vending and other activities. It's not just street vending, it's also all of those cafes and restaurants that are lined up in a continuous manner along the larger Boulevard, on streets and boulevards. You know, how they have patios, large patios right on the sidewalk, right next to where the motorbikes parked. All of this activity and the social life that it supports would be made very difficult if most people were driving by car. Without the possibility to stop on a whim, without the possibility to park basically, at the entrance of the coffee shop. So if they were experiencing this frictionless mobility, so this productive friction idea is very much about this continuous contact, that a flow of mobility, like the motorbike flow enables a continuous contact with the different activities that the built environment supports, that makes it possible for people to go in a smooth manner from being on the move to being engaged in social interactions in the activities that the built environment provides.

Arve Hansen  (00:18:50)  

Yes, I really like how your work captures that relationship between the bike and social and economic life in the city. And I think it's really, really important. And yeah, there's something that I, when I talked to car owners back when I did work on mobility, that's something that many would mention as well. That suddenly they couldn't stop for that bowl of pho that they wanted. I remember one guy said that he had stopped and then he had to pay a fine of 500,000 dong, it was the most expensive pho that he had ever had.

Hue-Tam Jamme  (00:19:21) 

That's something that came up often in interviews, because I would talk to people who were, you know, upper middle class individuals who were contemplating really seriously thinking about getting a car soon. And the interviews with these profiles of people were especially informative because parts of the interview process I would actually ask people to walk me through all the steps they made the day before. And I just give you one example. But one typical motorbike user would tell me about oh, in the morning, I did stop to by my breakfast on their way, and then they went back home. And then I picked up my child and we went to the park. And at the end of the day this person had made something like 11 stops in the city, including four stops in the evening to buy the ingredients for dinner at a wet market. And, you know, it would mean going through the market on the motorbike and stepping the foot down to buy the vegetables, to buy the rice, to buy the tofu, to buy basically every single ingredient for dinner at the different street vendor in the market. And then later in the conversation, as we go about the interview, this person is telling me about their intention to buy a car soon. And I asked the question of like, if you think of all the steps you made yesterday, do you think that would be possible? Would you go to the same places once you drive your car on a daily basis? And the first answer is like, why not? And then, you know, as they go through the mental exercise of thinking about all these tests, they're like, hmm, I guess not. Either the streets are not wide enough, or there's no way to park. And then the conclusion to this was, well, I guess I have breakfast at home. And I'd have to buy everything from this supermarket. And it was not necessarily out of choice, like in this case. I mean, in this one moment, at least it was a matter of constraint, the mobility, the new form of mobility, that would be the car would not allow the same way of interacting with the city, of engaging in the different activities that the city support.

Arve Hansen  (00:21:38)  

Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And there will not be any possibility of creating that amount of parking space within Ho Chi Minh City or Hanoi, there's just, there's just no way that you can do that.

Hue-Tam Jamme  (00:21:52) 

And it is the case that where parking does exist its underground parking or, you know, above ground parking, several floors of parking at the bottom of larger new developments that do include the mall, that do include residential condos and all. It is this transition from motorbikes to cars as it is happening, but the motorbike is resilient, you're totally right. It's not like people are dropping the motorbike to suddenly drive the car on a daily basis. For now, the people who do buy a car, buy it because they can afford it, because they want the children to be safe in traffic, because they're tired of sitting in the, you know, this busy traffic and breathing in all these exhaust pipes. These are, to me very understandable reasons. I don't think any mode should be banned one way or another. It is a debate, you know when Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City are actually adopting plans to ban motorbikes by 2025 from certain areas in the city centre. First question that comes to mind is why would they ban the motorbike, the mode of everyone, to make room for cars, which is still the mode of a select few. At the same time when you hear about the motivations of more and more people who can afford a car as it is becoming more and more affordable as well. But something interesting that is happening is, like I was saying people are not just shifting overnight. What's happening now is they have a car in addition to having a motorbike depending on where they have to go, they will have this multimodal experience, where they will still use the car nowadays more like for the family outing on the weekend. And the car enables them to maybe go to the beach more often like Vung Tau is not so far away from Ho Chi Minh City and not so many people get to enjoy that leisurely activity that is to go on a family outing on the weekend. But within the city center, they still now prefer the motorbike at least for running errands and go places, and I feel like this multimodal experience should be encouraged. It should be, this is what we should be planning for, you know, it's not a matter of like planning for one mode and preparing for another that will take over. I feel like it makes sense to me to encourage this make it possible for the people to actually enjoy this multimodalness.

Arve Hansen  (00:24:37) 

Yeah, I fully agree and I think these are very important point in all of our romanticizing about the motorbike. It's not pleasant to take your entire family on a motorbike downtown Ho Chi Minh City or Hanoi

Hue-Tam Jamme  (00:24:49) 

Especially when it rains, as a tropical country,

Arve Hansen  (00:24:55) 

But also the air pollution that just keeps getting worse. There have been studies that show quite clearly, you know the inequality in terms of exposure to air pollution that if you don't have very good masks, at least, you are exposed to a lot of harmful emissions when you're in traffic on a motorbike or on a bicycle. And if you're in a car with an air conditioner, it filters much of the particles. But yes, multimodal city, and one thing that I've been arguing for is the return of the bicycle. And that they should, authorities should embrace this two wheeled culture and then make room for the bicycle again, because the bicycle was pushed out. And then it came back sort of, but it came back not as a means of transportation, but as a means of exercise. And what I found, I found myself doing the same, is that you go out and you do exercise on the bicycle, then maybe you have breakfast and a coffee, and then you return home, have a shower, park the bike and get the motorbike and go to work. So that seems to be for now at least the return of the bicycle, its returned as a means of exercise. But another trend is, of course, and that is perhaps more promising in terms of clean air, is the electrification of the motorbike. Do you have any thoughts on that? can the many versions of the E-bike replace traditional motorbike?

Hue-Tam Jamme  (00:26:18) 

This is interesting because it does seem like the natural evolution, you know that you would like to see, that remains close to this typical mode. That is not as disruptive let's say, while hitting the target of moving towards cleaner mobility. To me, it's interesting that I remember back in maybe 2000. Before 2010, there was penetration on the market of electric bicycles that were coming from China, where I hear that in China, they've been adopted quite widely. And it seems like it now didn't really take off, especially not in the south, it seems like in the north, more people adopted it, but dropped it quite a few years later, basically as soon as the battery died, and people realize that replacing the battery is actually very costly, more expensive than buying the bike itself almost. And it seems like this very first failed experience back. Yeah, I think it was 2008/2010 kind of left a scar, like it's not the product that naturally people will go to. And when it comes to this distinction effect, you know, that is associated with purchasing your first car because now you've made it into the middle class and the upper middle class. The electric bike doesn't serve this goal. So to me, it's like, it seems like the electric motorbike or electric bicycle is not that appealing, because it does not have this distinction effect. And because there are certain concerns associated with the life expectancy of the battery, and of course the range that the bike affords and, and now people still have their motorbike that serves this goal. So why would they invest, it is quite costly as well, basically the same price as a motorbike. So why would they go replace their motorbike that works perfectly fine with an electric bike. So I don't know. I would like to see it being promoted more, especially when people will still, for the next decade I think, still will be replacing their motorbikes. Now it seems like they've reached motorbike peak, it's like 90 something percent of all households have at least one. Typically, it's more like one per person in driving age. People are not getting equipped anymore, but they will still replace motorbikes as motorbikes get old, so I would like to see at least this marginal transition from motorbikes to electric motorbikes or electric bikes as people are replacing older motorbikes. But will they massively transition towards it just like they are massively transitioning to the car. I don't think that is going to happen.

Arve Hansen  (00:29:24)  

Well, I started looking into or started studying mobility in Vietnam 10 years ago or so. There was already much talk about this, right, the electric scooters and so on. And what we pretty much got instead were this kind of hybrid like, electric bicycles that schoolchildren especially use, which aren't really bicycles, they're like electric scooters with pedals, basically, and they don't require a license. So those are very popular as an addition sort of to motorbikes. But they don't compete at all with the traditional motorbike. But I have seen that lately there are some developments. For example, Vinfast, as you mentioned, have their Klara model, which is an electric bike. And some new startups. I read about this ThatBike company, for example. And it seems at least that they're taking seriously the worry about the battery, and that they're also constructed in ways that they're faster to charge. And you can charge them easily at home and things like that. So to this day, in some ways, they sort of embrace the mobility cultures of Vietnam. So that gives me a bit more hope for that sector. I live in Norway, which is one of the very few countries in the world that has actually managed a transition towards electric cars, a large scale one, and to create the functioning market for electric cars. This process has been going on for decades, it is required so many incentives, and so many government policies targeting the sector. So I fully agree with you, I don't think this will just happen, it needs to be put in place somehow.

Hue-Tam Jamme  (00:30:53) 

I agree with you that the market has is playing a role. These innovations like the Clara that you mentioned by Vinfast. And That Bike, you can tell that they are targeting a certain population, they are proposing a new product that is not just an electric version of what people already have, I feel like they are aiming a little bit for the Tesla effect. You know, we want to promote a new electric product that does get to this distinction effect that people aim for when they're buying a new car. And that bike I guess is a little different. Even in the design of the bike, you can tell that they're, it seems to me like they're reconnecting with Russian Minsk that has been around for a long time. Very attractive, you know, to like the adventurer. This is the adventurer that goes in the mountains. And now they are obviously targeting this population that look for this style. But there is a notion of style, like a notion of like the identity, your identity, what you would express about your identity through your motorbike. Which is something that's again, connecting to this earlier question we address you know, how deeply cultural the motorbike is, how much people customize their motorbikes. This whole industry about stickers to make it match your favorite color and your favorite manga character. And to me, this is kind of what is happening with these new products that come on the market that are targeting a very specific group with a very specific identity that want to represent, they want their new vehicle to tell something about themselves. And that gives me hope to in the sense that they are designing a new product that can be attractive for reasons that are not just the fact that they're electric, an electric version of the common thing they already have.

Arve Hansen  (00:32:56)

And interestingly they're also targeting exports, right? So there are many of these are Vietnamese products that are also targeted for a larger market than Vietnam. Alright, we'll start wrapping up soon, but we should discuss a bit more what does the Vietnamese mobility future look like? And one of the new, quite brand new things is of course, the new Metro. Both Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi have been constructing metros in cities that have had very little public transport compared to the need. So what do you think will this alter Vietnamese urban mobility completely?

Hue-Tam Jamme  (00:33:29)

I think it will fit, at least at first it will fit in this range of options, that is expanding on mobility options that people have, for multimodal experience, one thing that I'm a little worried about moving forward, as we see this mobility landscape evolve, is the equity of this landscape. We started by talking about the motorbike as being as of now, as of five years ago, say, really the mode of everyone that would enable the ease of mobility, which is what you expect, from transportation, mobility, the ease of mobility. Basically, for everyone across class, gender and socio economic means, education, everyone had access to this form of mobility. Where, as far as I know, in the last travel survey, you know, a representative survey back in 2014, I think, people were already complaining about how congested the streets were, but the flow was going, the flow was moving. And on average, the daily commute was 14 minutes, it is nothing. So people were able to access all the places they need to access, everyone was able to access all the places they need to go to, and in not so much time. And that is getting worse and worse as more and more cars are coming on the streets. So there is something that seems deeply inequitable, in seeing the mobility of the few people who can afford this new form of buying a car have come to the detriment of the mobility of everyone else. Basically, I would hear in my interviews with car drivers themselves, you know, being aware that as I enjoy the comfort of my AC and my cleaner air in the confines of my car, and also the safety for everyone inside the car, I know that I'm making the air, and the traffic more dangerous for everyone else around me. So this is deeply inequitable, how things are changing. Something else that I'm really concerned about as well is how the Metro projects at hand both in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, I, I used to work on them as a consultant, the job I used to do as before I joined academia for my PhD. But the way that those projects are being promoted by international experts coming from the international agencies involved in the funding of these systems, and the way the narrative that is adopted by the authorities, the Vietnamese authorities, is very much the same as what you would find everywhere else. Like we advertise, we promote those metro systems as the cleanest modes as the most equitable modes, like with this mindset, that this is going to be public transportation that is accessible to the public. But when you see how the first line that just opened in Hanoi, and the first line that is currently about to open in Ho Chi Minh City, like just when you look at, at where the stations are located, this is nothing like what the motorbike mobility are for. You have only one station downtown, like the first line in Hanoi, it's not even close to the city center, where most of the activity, most of the jobs are, the people still live. So it's the one station that is touching on the city center. And then the whole system, the whole line, you know, flows outwards, to the new urban areas where you have places like Vinh Home Royal City opening. So this is not the mode of the people. This is the mode of the people who are shifting to a more modern lifestyle. When you go to work every morning, you go back home in the evening. But you don't have like this very typical experience of today where like, the typical experience today still is for the vast majority people who live right in the dense core of the city and work in the same place, oftentimes in the same house. So the ground floor of the building will be the shop and the rest of the family lives on top of the shop. And then you have all of your daily, you know moves about running errands here and there. But it's not like what the Metro will afford you to do. So this is this mindset, this idea that the government is proposing this new alternative to the motorbikes, like the ideas like we'll ban bikes by 2025 because by then we will have the metro systems, will be in a capacity to absorb the demand for mobility. This transition is not a one on one relationship. There's no way it can actually serve the same goal. These are my concerns from the equity of mobility in the future in Vietnam. And when it comes to the broader system, you know, social relations that the mobility landscape supports, you know, something that I suspect is that as the Metro absorbe some of the demand, as people shifting to the car, going back to this productive friction that I was talking about earlier, to me, the motorbikes support this continuous connection between the flow and the streets. So this continuous activity, and what I anticipate, you know, is a spacing out of those friction points. So those friction points, basically, maybe concentrating around the, the metro stations, those transportation nodes, concentrating in places where cars can stop, but down the line spacing out of this friction and emptying out of those public spaces and a shift towards more and more individualistic way of life where people don't get so often a chance to come together as a public. So, this is, in short, how I would summarize like the different points that we mentioned.

Arve Hansen  (00:39:40)

These are excellent points. My worry is, if you look at many other large Southeast Asian cities, Jakarta being among the worst, probably, but also Manila, Bangkok, you know, these Vietnamese cities are actually working much better in terms of mobility. I'd like to quote my colleague, Desmond McNeil here, he's done much work on Indonesia and including in Jakarta many, many years ago. And he once asked me, why people in Vietnam start replacing the motorbike with the car. And I just answered briefly that it, you know, the car is the future. And his response was excellent. I think he said, 'but we've seen the future and doesn't work'. And this is my worry. So visiting, especially Hanoi, but also Ho Chi Minh City or Danang over many, many years and just see this increase in especially then cars, just seeing like how gradually gradually traffic is slowing down and gradually becoming more congested. I just want to fully support your point earlier about the need for a multimodal city, you need the two wheelers there to make this work, I think and then you also need of course, public transport that actually works. Alright, so I think we'll end on that note.

Hue-Tam Jamme  (00:40:57) 

Thank you very much, Arve for inviting me.

Arve Hansen  (00:41:00) 

So I really enjoy this so Hue-Tam Jamme. Thank you so much for joining the Nordic Asia podcast.

Closer  (00:41:07) 

You have been listening to the Nordic Asia podcast.