Hanoi People’s Committee has issued a plan to invest trillions of dong in upgrading the public lighting system around city from 2014 to 2020.

Under the plan, new lighting systems will be built at a cost of over 2,100 billion VND (100 million USD) for roads in the city’s urban and rural districts and towns as well as for alleys in streets and villages, with the aim of ensuring lighting for all urban roads and 80 percent of rural roads.

At the same time, the existing lighting systems will be upgraded with old technologies replaced at an estimated cost of more than 500 billion VND (23.8 million USD). A 45 billion VND control centre will also be built.

Furthermore, the city will also apply solutions to save electric consumption.

At present, Hanoi has one of the best public lighting systems in the country, which covers 2,876 kilometres of its roads, half of which are city streets.

However, only 28 percent of the city’s lights, mostly in downtown areas, are controlled by the main centre, while the remaining 72 percent are managed by local control panels, limiting the ability to adjust the time of lighting. In addition, the system still use overhead electrical wires, which is both unsafe and unsightly.-VNA