Photo credit: M.H. Benton (2019) 40 minute wait to get in the train. BTS Sukhumvit line – Punnawithi station.
Recently, Bangkok has started numerous expansions of train line around the city. Large amount of money is spent into these projects with positive expectations of Bangkok people, thinking that it would improve the logistic system and could potentially solve the traffic issues. However, spending money on improving rail system might not be worth the cash as one may think. The inefficiency of train in Bangkok is caused by unorganized town-plan and cost-ineffectiveness. It could even lead to more inequality.
The unorganized town-plan
Bangkok is one of the most unorganized city of the world. The economic area, residential area, etc. were placed all over without thinking carefully. Rather than having concentrated and organized infrastructure, the placement of high building all around Bangkok make it extremely hard for rail expansion to deviate in its own path. As a result, one could clearly observed that BTS sky train system was indifferent from riding over the highway along the main road of Sukhumvit or Silom. This failure of expansion path creates a difficult to make use of rail system to its full capability. In the end, rail system will never be able to fully connect to residential area or working area, it still requires people to grab motorbike/taxi nearby the stations to reach their destinations.
Moreover, the unorganized town-plan leads to failure to make rail connection. The train line in Thailand is so unconnected that transition to other lines is extremely difficult. The inability to deviate away from main roads make it literally almost impossible to design an efficient cross-path of the rail system. And even if it could, it would require a greater amount of money than it should be. As a result, the Bangkok city plan inhibited the ability of rail system to reach its potential level of efficiency.
The cost-ineffectiveness and Inequality
Rail system requires huge amount of land and capital to construct, and at the same time have large maintenance costs. Thinking to invest in rail system requires a careful evaluation on additional benefits granted beyond the benefit of just only transportation.
Let’s take a look at Tokyo, one could clearly observe that each train station creates huge value to the economy. Stations are surrounded by local restaurants, shops, and etc. (at the same time easily connected to bus, other rail lines). This, thus, creates additional economic value and efficiency as the middle class can improve their standard of living both in terms of additional amenities surrounding the station while lowered the employment rate by creating more jobs. Moreover, Japan could create additional indirect value from its rail investment by promoting the market competition. As traveling mobility increases, consumer’s elasticity of demand tends to become more elastic over time. This means that the restaurants and shops around Shinjuku station need to keep focus on their product’s quality and services or else it would not take long for consumers to take train and buy substitutes goods on other stations nearby.
Thailand is quite the opposite of that. This is due to monopolistic market structure that exists in Bangkok for a long time. The large shopping malls were built and connected directly to most important stations (considered as location strategic point), as the rich people took this opportunity to buy land assets close to the station and segregated the poor to move out away from city’s center. Hence, the local shops like those metro-mall area aren’t doing very well, as people are drawn to large shopping mall. Instead of adding up the economic value and lowering the employment, the stations build up in the long-run leads to greater inequality in the economy as the additional welfare goes into the hand of the rich. Hence, this is not cost effective at all.
Last but not least, building of rail system in Thailand also leads to the indirected progress where one might keep pushing up the cost burden to the poor without realizing it. As the rich keep buying land assets along the train stations, they keep push up the cost of living around those area. Moreover, the poor doesn’t enjoy better standard of living at all, as the price of the services relative to the domestic household income is relatively high. This meant rail system is not affordable to the poor. The lands that considered closed to these transits will face price surge due to asset’s speculation, and excess and unnecessary condominiums with not enough people going to occupy were launched as follow. Although the numbers look good in the way that they contributed to GDP, in an economic viewpoint, it is not efficient.
The right solution?
To sum up the stated idea, the efficiency of rail investment project is eroded by many factors like unconnected transits due to unorganized town-plan, low value added to economy, and indirect negative consequence by causing more inequality. Not only that, the congestion problems in Bangkok worsen over time. In the end, the solution might be more simple than that, but some people cannot see the wood for the trees. The solution here is to make use of existed road infrastructure that Bangkok has been built since 1997 to its full capability, and that is by improving the bus system. This, hence, is both more affordable to the poor, and also less costly to do. It also won’t create additional land’s speculation and excessive condominium. In the end, the author believes that the improvement on bus system would ease the congestion problems in Bangkok in the long run.
As a person who regularly uses buses since secondary school to travel between home and school, I totally agree that the bus system desperately needs a huge revamp. I would like to add that bus lanes should also be implemented to complement this as well, particularly in major 3-lane streets and above.
By reserving one lane of streets for buses, they will be able to bypass all the congested traffic and would reach destinations faster, thus encouraging people to use them more. Additionally, buses and their drivers’ qualities need to be drastically improved. Routes info should be available in a user-friendly map or line form in every bus stops. Each bus stop need be clearly named and labelled in both Thai and English, so passengers know “what” stops to get on or off. A lot of buses are in extremely bad conditions and should be replaced with more passenger-friendly and environment-friendly models. However, it’s going to take another debate on what to do with the old models.
Nevertheless, no matter how good the bus system is, it would not be able to cover every corners of the city due to how the city is laid out, with an enormous amount of “Sois” and small street branches with dead-ends. Buses, similar to the metro and skytrain currently, can only run along major streets and roads, and cannot access small Sois. So the burden is still up to local motorbike taxis to transfer a lot of people on their last (or first) parts of their journey. Hence by saying that improving the bus infrastructure in Bangkok will solve all the problems is false. In this case it’s more of a problem with the horrible city layout rather than public transportation, would is extremely hard to tackle. Many people who live in those Sois and small roads will still feel the need to utilize cars because they cannot reliably commute using public transports.
I think comparing Bangkok to Tokyo is too extreme. Japan is already a developed country so obviously Bangkok is going to look inferior in every aspects. You mentioned stations surrounded by local shops and restaurants, and connected with bus routes and other rail lines add value to the economy. Part of that is due to how developed the whole transportation system in Tokyo is, and we all know that Bangkok is trying its hardest to achieve that.
Anyway, most MRT and BTS stations in Bangkok are actually already connected with bus stops (they’re usually in very close vicinity of the station, or right at the station), it’s just that people don’t realize that because they don’t use buses regularly or perhaps the bus stops are not as obvious. You mentioned that many large shopping malls are built to connect with stations. Although this is true to some extent, I would argue it’s also true the other way around; that many of our stations are built to connect with the pre-existing malls. For example, Siam station was built to connect with the already existing Siam Discovery, Siam Center, and MBK. Siam Paragon, and most recently Siam Square One, came later to further solidify this area as one of Bangkok’s main shopping centers. Central Ladprao was built before the MRT station Ladprao connected with the mall. Fortune Town was built before the MRT station Rama 9 connected with the mall. Later Central Rama 9 connected with the station. I agree that this indirectly favors some of the rich, but it also created loads of employment in those areas, both low-income and middle-income jobs, so I wouldn’t agree that it’s exclusively the rich that benefits.
For the rising living cost, I personally think it’s inevitable as it’s a sign of a growing economy, and we can’t expect it stay static. There are some suggestions I had in mind that might help the poor in using the public services available. For example, I highly endorse the idea of “Single Ride” tickets for both buses and trains, which basically is a one fixed price ticket, that is valid for a certain period of time (e.g. 1 hour). Another ticket would be “Season tickets”, something like a subscription for like 1 month, 6 month, or 1 year, allowing you to use unlimited BTS/MRT/bus, etc. These types of tickets are very common in Europe and I think we could take a page from there. Since Bangkok is an extremely large city, for this to work effectively – as many poor people would obviously not travel across the city to work -, we might need to divide the city into zones, something that London, Berlin, Paris, Madrid, for instance, have done. The fares of these tickets will then be adjusted according to the zones. These are pretty complicated and would require another article on its own.
Lastly, I don’t think it’s fair to put all the blame on our rails expansion projects that the poor aren’t not enjoying higher standard of living as there are loads of other factors involved. The problem of inequality in our country is a vicious cycle and is extremely hard to crack. For instance, education is one of the main roots of inequality, and that has to do with the government’s educational policies and social stigma of teachers/professors, something that could be discussed in whole new debate in regards to Public Economics.
I agree with your point on the limitation of bus to reach small sois, due to how countries is laid out, which this is where it’s important for us to rethink about future town-plan and city’s organize in the future urbanization. It’s impossible to go all-in to bus system, my point here is not clarifying that we should have no rail system. However, my stand point in this article remains same such that spending money expanding too much on rail’s mega project without balancing bus system is not going to be efficient. As you mentioned these 2 public transport systems should functioning together.
For the point that I compared to Tokyo, it’s to point out the successful points they made. The reason I take Tokyo is that it is one of the country that can serve as a paragon for successful rail investment. Thailand is far away from that, for sure, majority of the countries around this world are also far away from Japan too, however, we still need to make comparison to see answer the point that what made their rail system successful, and what are factors prohibited us from achieving successful rail system. In the article I mentioned only about “value added” and “market structure issues”, due to space limitation, but in Japan the rail system serves as a strong mechanism to create “connection” to the benefits of industrialization and agglomeration as well, which for us still far away, BUT we still need to know what is the right direction to go, and what is not. In the end I would like to conclude that making comparison with Tokyo is still a fair argument, because if we only look at the countries that Thailand is considered better developed, then it will be harder to point out the problems that we should considered.
Second point you mentioned that their is a lot of shopping mall existed before MRT,BTS was built. But basically due to limited space I haven’t go through the corrupted system in construction industry in Thailand. To be honest, MRT doesn’t connected to Central Lad Prao by accident, and Central Lad Prao didn’t placed them-selves to that place “without not knowing that their would be a rail system occur in the future. The construction company, mega-project, and rich elites know these project in advances. Large amount of lands around transit line are bought before the announcement of rail project. This is not an accident that happened randomly and their is a lot of evidence of this can be provide to show these pattern. So the argument that it’s actually “indirectly” favored the rich, for me looks more like a “direct extraction process” to benefit the rich. Also the point that I argue that these shopping mall creates large employment, however does those created employment sustainable is another interesting question to ask. In the conditioned that their is too many shopping malls nowadays more than the needs, and online shopping is hitting quiet strong, does these jobs created by these investment would be sustainable in the long-run is my argument on your stated point.
Lastly, is about living cost. I strongly disagree with you on this point, growing economy and living cost is not necessary a “trade-off” issue. Economy can grow, without the rise in living cost, if overall income level is improve more than the inflated price. Although many policy you mentioned “single ride”, and “season tickets”, might be able to help the poor, when we implemented these kind of policy we need to considered about issues of accessibility to the poor as well. The current condition is that most of the poor communities in Bangkok concentrated largely in Klong Tei area where they are hardly access to this transit system, and building one is hardly possible due to current existed infrastructure. However they are still easily able to access to bus system, hence why this article support more spending on improving the bus system. Implementing policy that not reaching the target group might worsen the inequality, and this article believes that bus system have more potential to reach target group.
I agree that this complex issue on train problems are issues that must be considered various dimensions of problems that existed. However, if it is not yet the right time to invest in rail-system (due to other factors you mentioned), hence we required to thinking about solving other issue first ,that we can do, and it is more effective (Which I offered, to make better use of bus system). In the end, large investment in wrong industry in wrong time is not a good idea.
I appreciated your response.
I really like your topic and enjoyed reading your text however I would have liked to see a number of cost figures and how much the city is generating from customers each year, to have a more exact imagine about the cost inefficiency. How much did the investment of the BTS costs ? What exact train stations can’t the poor afford ? The BTS as I remember costs 40 Bath but other trains I paid 1 to 5 Baht, which the poor could afford and the bus system is affordable for the middle to lower income class as well. I totally agree that there needs to be a spare bus lane in most streets in Bangkok, the traffic is in general too much and people have to waste too much time. Furthermore I am with you Apiwich Pitimetha that Bangkok ( a world city) needs to label information in English, most of the signs are just in Thai which makes it much more complicated to foreigners. The question is, is there enough space in Bangkok, to create spare bus lanes, I guess not ! Furthermore Bangkok is not that developed yet, to provide the financial capital to invest in traffic systems all around of the city.
Hi, First of all thanks for your reply, I appreciated your comment and it is very interesting to see how you response.
First point, it would be long and quiet complex, but the benefits of BTS and MRT is yet to be “receives as a city” due to the concession system agreement. Each lines have difference concession treaty, and the reason that we required concession is that the government have not enough budget to finance these rails by its self to covered the target they wanted to reach. So cost figure is quiet hard to estimated, because of the concession treaties, and it is not actually transparency enough to see clearly how they split the investment (I guess this could potentially related to budget miss-allocations issue). However, based on announced data of lasted 3 lines, the bidding for “red rail lines” ended up at 8.6 billions bath (if that is “over-cost” and bribery related must be looked in more detail, but seeing how the bidding goes I can smell something wrong). Based on that figured, the cost is quiet high, and the ability of that investment to provided enough welfare to covered the cost is questionable.
The point I mentioned that it is un-affordable to the poor is based on how I considered in-terms of standard of living. While the poor roughly earned at 300 bath (for those who worked at formal sector, in reality majority of the poor concentrated in informal sector but for simplicity let’s viewed this way), they usually used BTS as one way ticket, if they take 40 baths back and fourth, it would become 80 baths (not knowing that their is further additional cost from grabbing nearby bus, motorbike), which is already almost reach 1/3 or their income level. (The rail that cost 1 to 5 baths is serves different purpose from traveling around Bangkok and the quality is quiet low). Hence grabbing bus is more accessible for them and more cost-effective for them.
For the last point you mentioned that we have not enough space to create a bus lanes, I think differently. Efficient bus system doesn’t required its own lanes to operate, from the fact that road infrastructure already established very strongly in Thailand (due to spurred capital from 1997), we can already operated bus system efficiently around Bangkok area using the current existing road. So financial capital is not a problems ,and if Bangkok already have enough potential to finance rail system (observed from those mega project launch),then there are no excuses that there are not enough capital to invest in traffic system my opinion.