A ferry service linking An Giang Province with Dong Thap Province in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta region will resume from September 2 this year, following local residents' requests for more convenient commuting.

The transport authorities of these two southern provinces recently agreed on the resumption of the Vam Cong ferry service, a representative of the An Giang Department of Transport said on Thursday.

The ferry service had been offering rides across the Hau River for a century, before being suspended as a bridge of the same name, some four kilometers away from the ferry terminal, was opened to traffic in 2019.

Le Hoang Bao, director of the Dong Thap Department of Transport, said the agency is ramping up efforts to resume the service.

Some voiced their concern that resuming the ferry service and operating the bridge concurrently could lead to wastefulness.

In response, Bao said that it was not wasteful, as the transport authority took advantage of the available ferry facilities to meet travel demand of local people, but not investing in a new project.

An Giang and Dong Thap Ferry Companies will take charge of operating the service from 4:00 am to 10:00 pm every day, using three 40- and 60-metric-ton ferries.

Cars with over 30 seats and trucks with more than seven metric tons in capacity are not allowed to use the ferry service.

The fare for a single-ride on the ferry route is VND6,000 (US$0.25) for motorcycles, VND25,000 ($1.06) for cars with no more than seven seats and trucks less than three metric tons, and VND60,000 ($2.54) for commercial cars with 16-30 seats and five - to seven-metric-ton trucks.

The Vam Cong Bridge was put into use on May 19, 2019, spanning over the Hau River and linking Can Tho City’s Thot Not District with Dong Thap’s Lap Vo District, with a total investment of VND5.7 trillion ($241.6 million).

After the bridge was opened to traffic, authorities suspended the ferry service until now.

However, many workers of the Lap Vo Industrial Park in Dong Thap found it time-consuming to travel more than 15km through the Vam Cong Bridge to their workplace, much farther than taking a ferry ride.

Therefore, they and other residents living near the ferry terminal repeatedly sought the authorities’ nod to resume the ferry service.

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