Vietnam’s planned petrol scooter ban for Hanoi raises fears for livelihoods

Mai, a Hanoi resident, often wakes up to air pollution enveloping Vietnam’s capital in a thick fog.

“Pollution in Hanoi is alarming,” Mai told Al Jazeera, asking to be referred to by her first name.The main culprits, Mai said, are “exhaust fumes from motorbikes and buildings under construction”.

With about seven million motorbikes crowding Hanoi’s streets, petrol two-wheelers are a significant part of the reason the city regularly tops rankings for the world’s worst air quality.

Now, authorities are planning to ban the vehicles from the city centre.

In July, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh issued Directive 20, which would bar all gasoline motorbikes from driving within Hanoi’s Ring Road 1, which encircles the city, by July 1, 2026.

Mai, who already owns an electric motorcycle, supports the initiative but said Hanoi residents are split on the ban.

“People have two opposing opinions,” she said. “Half agree to change and half do not.”

Observers have questioned the feasibility of enforcing the ban within such a tight timeframe, pointing to the limited public transport, patchy electricity grid, and lack of charging infrastructure in the city, in addition to the logistical challenges of blocking millions of drivers.

Some fear the change will hit Hanoi’s poorest residents hardest, and see the initiative as a pretext to bolster the country’s largest conglomerate, Vingroup, and its electric vehicle offshoot, VinFast.