Taxis to be reduced by half in Myanmar's Yangon

Myanmar's Yangon regional authorities are planning to reduce the number of taxis running in the city by half in an effort to ease the current heavy traffic jam, an official of the Yangon Region Transport Administration told Xinhua Tuesday.

At present, there are over 66,000 taxis operating in the city. As part of its efforts to solve the traffic congestion, the authorities had earlier abolished all 300 old bus lines running in the city and replaced with up to 79 new bus lines starting from Jan. 16.

Yangon Region Chief Minister U Phyo Min Thein has also vowed to upgrade Yangon bus service system to meet international standard by early next year, saying that old city buses were replaced with modern vehicles with GPS navigation system to be installed and operated by the Control Center and a prepaid card payment system will be introduced, under which one card can be used in buses, trains, water transport and purchasing.

There new 79 bus lines are being operated by 3,500 buses in Yangon to transport 2.5 million people daily out of 6 million's residents in Yangon.

The government is now also assessing the newly introduced Yangon Bus Service (YBS) for three months and will change to a public bus service later this year. Endit