The nightmare infrastructure RUINING our holiday dreams

First, ever since Bangkok was born 233 years ago it has been the centre of everything in Thailand – from mainstream schools and universities to government offices and big companies that are the main sources of sought-after jobs, whether white- or blue-collar. The status has gone uncontested for two centuries. Birthday celebrations for Bangkok are unmatched anywhere, including in Sukhothai, which we proudly tout as the first Siamese capital.

It’s no surprise that with that status has come expansion. Bangkok is home to multinational and local companies, making it attractive to migrant workers from other parts of the country. Though the capital is officially home to 6 million people, each day an additional 6 million commute to work in Bangkok. Anywhere a road is cut, housing estates spring up, and there’s often little thought given to public services.

This leads to the second challenge: traffic congestion. Given poor transport services, most families in Bangkok have at least one vehicle. A vast number of these vehicles heads towards the inner city in the morning then out again in the evening. On weekends, roads leading to shopping districts are jammed. Over long holidays, the jams simply move from the capital to the main roads leading to the provinces.

Easing the load on Bangkok by establishing new cities has been a dream of all governments. But the reality has remained the same: existing cities expanding in size. Housing estates mushroom along each new road as it is laid. Transport services remain poor and residents adopt the Bangkok way: Each family desires at least one vehicle.

In Khon Kaen, whose inner city was designed with just a few main roads for convenient transportation, the suburbs are swelling. Farmland is being turned over to residential and commercial developments. When the number of vehicles rises during a long holiday period, it can take some 40 minutes to travel from one end of the city to the other. The situation is the same in other big cities in the North and Northeast, like Chiang Mai and Nakhon Ratchasima.

A major part of the problem is poor public transport, both for the cities themselves and on the commuter routes between them. This needs to be tackled urgently, given the economic cost of transportation and growing concerns over climate change.

Thailand is a net oil importer. It looks absurd when vehicles jam kilometres of road linking Bangkok and Nakhon Ratchasima. The commute between the two cities is less than three hours on a normal day, but that can stretch to a painful eight hours during a holiday period.

Yesterday was a public holiday, lengthening the May Day break for public-sector workers from three days to five. Yet, as most private companies did not observe the holiday, most workers headed home on Sunday. On that day, it took six and a half hours to travel from Nakhon Ratchasima to Bangkok. Most of us are used to this. Whenever a driver complains about the jam, others just shrug. They complain too when they suffer a similar problem, but they also realise that a solution is just a pipe dream. History suggests that it takes a disaster to spark concerted and collective effort.

Traffic congestion steals time as well as money from our wallets. As oil prices are lower than in previous years, most of us focus our complaints on stolen time. But commuters and the government sector should not ignore the fact that fuel is being wasted in traffic jams, at a cost to the economy as well as the environment.

Stuck deep in the traffic between Nakhon Ratchasima and Bangkok on Sunday night, anyone lowering their windows would have noticed that birds were still chirping at 11pm. The red dots of brake lights blanketed half the vast highway, while few cars were heading in the opposite direction. At night, half the highway was dazzling with headlights from vehicles moving at just 10-20km per hour. 

How long before the trees that line the highway succumb to the load of heat and fumes? 

More immediate and tragic are the high casualties from road accidents. It is ridiculous that, every holiday period, a large number of police have to be moved from their everyday duties to monitor roads nationwide.

Last but not least, with plans in the pipeline for high-speed trains to connect Bangkok and major cities, we should be asking ourselves how we can put an end to the endless expansion of Bangkok. It is extremely difficult to solve problems already caused by the expansion. The situation will only get worse if we allow the urban sprawl to continue at its current rate.