(Note: Since I posted this, I learned that the heat index in central Hanoi reached 55 degrees over the weekend. Heat index is calculated using a combination of temperature and humidity.)
I spent more time than usual on a motorbike taxi today while going round trying to find a replacement air-con remote control for the one I broke yesterday. It was hot hot hot, and I wasn’t going home until I found one.
The quality of the bike-taxi drivers in Hanoi is pretty variable. With some you think, as you unlock your fingers from the grab rail and free your sunglassses from the back of the driver's helmet, ‘I would’ve sweated less if I’d just walked’. With others, you can relax in the presence of a master. Today it was mostly the latter, and I got to thinking about how the traffic system here works. On one level, it all seems a bit random and indefinite. Traffic flow directions and red lights seem to function more as suggestions than outright rules. The result is that the drivers – bikes and cars alike - are in a constant state of negotiation with everyone around them.
A lot of the bikes - mostly something like a 110cc Honda Wave – don’t even have mirrors fitted. Drivers cross lanes, squeeze into tiny gaps, stop short of junctions suddenly to avail of the shade offered by a street-side tree, and hop kerbs at busy times, all the while using the horn for communication in what might be called, in a pretentious moment, ‘a mobile, polyvocal negotiation of shared space’. Basically, it’s noisy and people go around each other.
Surprisingly enough, it seems to work. And interestingly, that notion of a ‘shared space’ for traffic is something that has been tried in the Netherlands and some UK and US cities aiming for less car-centric and more pedestrian-friendly streets. The pedestrian-friendly bit still has room for improvement in Hanoi, and maybe the effect hasn’t quite been planned, but it’s an interesting change from the more straightforward and less-pliable traffic of most western cities where the car is boss – ‘This is my lane and I have a green light and I will go’.
Anyhow, I got my remote and happily have cool air again in which to sit listening to the negotiation outside.
For more, check out the link and videos below:
Where the Sidewalk Doesn’t End: What Shared Space has to Share
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz5uxAsrbwI