THAILAND-TRANSPORT: Bid to Clean up Traffic Mess Falls Flat

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Teena Gill

BANGKOK, Jan 19 1996 (IPS) - Making outrageous promises is routine work for most politicians but even sceptical Bangkok citizens had high hopes when Deputy Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra vowed last July to solve the city’s notorious traffic problem in six months.

That time has elapsed, yet there is little to show that he has been able to keep his word. Long lines of cars continue to choke the city’s main arteries, and some even feel that the traffic has never been so bad.

More than half of those surveyed this month by the Bangkok- based Rajabhat Institute felt the traffic situation remains just as chaotic or has even deteriorated since July.

But Thaksin, a telecom tycoon turned politician, has declared victory, claiming “the traffic situation is better than before”. The issue is crucial to Thaksin, whose Palang Dharma Party depends on votes of Bangkok’s middle class for its political survival.

Given the mammoth proportions of Bangkok’s traffic problem, Thaksin’s critics say his efforts to solve it have at best been superficial.

With traffic crawling at an average rate of seven kilometres per hour in major thoroughfares and the country losing more than 16 million dollars a day in wasted gasoline and working time, Bangkok’s traffic is rated as one of the worst in the world.

Among the initiatives taken by Thaksin so far include an increase in the number of traffic policemen on the roads, provision of better communication equipment for traffic coordination and a crackdown on traffic violators.

One of the more serious of these measures has undoubtedly been the shifting of bank working hours, a move that has already been approved by the cabinet and is to be implemented in February.

“Paris, Hong Kong and Munich have the same road area as Bangkok but have no traffic problems due to effective public transport, traffic restraint and a pleasant pedestrian environment,” says Maurice Leonhardt of the Sustainable Action Network for Asia and the Pacific.

He says there are just too many cars on Bangkok’s roads. Leonhardt also points out that only 14 percent of all trips made in the Thai capital are on foot or bicycle compared to 45 percent in the enormous Tokyo metropolitan area.

A surfeit of cars is certainly a problem in Bangkok where an average of 500 new units roll out onto the streets every day. Added to nearly one million two-wheelers, thousands of heavy duty trucks and poor urban planning, the end result is sheer disaster.

Unable to take on the politically powerful lobby of car makers and retailers, successive Thai governments have instead tried to increase road space through new infrastructure projects.

The Thai government is already working on 9.4 billion dollars’ worth of new infrastructure projects while a 20-year Bangkok mass transit study conducted recently outlines future plans for a 215 km mass transit route, costing 20.8 billion dollars.

Given the huge amounts of money involved, most of these projects have been tailored to suit various vested interests, which has only worsened the traffic situation.

The Don Muang tollway, sanctioned in 1990 to connect inner Bangkok to the city’s domestic and international airports, has run into serious financial problems since it opened to the public in 1994 because of lack of users and the approval of a competing rail and road project running virtually parallel to its route.

The commercial viability of both these ventures is now doubtful. Meanwhile, work on them has added to Bangkok’s traffic chaos.

“Bangkok’s mega transport projects have been sanctioned without sufficient foresight into their real impact on the city,” says Chodchoy Sophonpanich, scion of a prominent Sino-Thai business family and a leading environment campaigner here.

Chodchoy has been trying in recent years to prevent the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority from going ahead with its 1.72 billion dollar elevated rail project in the heart of the capital. Work on the project, however, started last year and is stuck now due to lack of financial support from leading institutions.

The Thai government has also encouraged new industries to set up operations outside Bangkok. A few industrial centres have sprung up outside the capital, but most entrepreneurs still prefer to operate here where much of the country’s wealth and facilities are concentrated.

Because of Bangkok’s traffic nightmare, many multinational firms and international agencies trying to set up offices in South- east Asia have been bypassing the city in favour of Hong Kong, Singapore and even the less developed cities in Indochina.

There has also been a sharp drop in occupancy rates at major hotels in Bangkok as tourists head for other destinations to avoid the capital’s traffic problem.

Thailand depends heavily on foreign investment for its economic growth, so this problem causes much concern among the country’s planners.

While much of Bangkok’s woes are due to indiscriminate growth, which in turn has been sparked by an excessive influx of foreign money, it will not be surprising if turning away fresh investment may well become the key to solving the city’s traffic crisis.