Tomtomtom69

Very well articulated. 100% correct.

Precisely. It's quite self evident when you're coming in to land say in Bangkok (at either airport). You'll see a few main roads and some small sois that end in dead ends coming off these roads but very few connections between them. In more rural areas or the outskirts of the cities, it would be very easy to build a grid system of roads as most of those areas are farmland. However, this isn't done and instead, the government builds maybe one wide highway through the area and developers build their housing estates, strip malls, shopping centers, schools etc. along these highways and access is via the one main highway only. Vietnam and Cambodia know how to build roads in a grid pattern when cities are expanded. Look at how well designed District 7 of Ho Chi Minh and Koh Pich in Phnom Penh are, but they probably learned their methods from the French.

A couple of other factors I didn't mention in previous replies: 1) traffic light timings are poorly staggered; they often use police officers to control them or have random, preset timings, which explains why you're sitting at a quiet intersection, where no one is coming in the other direction but you're still forced to wait 30-60 seconds or even longer before you're allowed to go. In busier areas, this can lead to major traffic congestion 2) a lot of "superblocks", which means that secondary roads aren't constructed as landowners own these large plots, upon which housing estates, shopping malls, buildings are built but with access only from the main road. This is why even in the cities, most major roads resemble highways, not urban roads. You can't make right hand turns. You have to use underpasses underneath bridges or travel straight for 3km before being able to do a u-turn.

Major highways are congested, even in rural areas. On Friday evenings, weekends and holidays in particular, but not only then. Petchakasem highway as far south as Bang Saphan at least and pretty much the whole way to the Malaysian border is always full of traffic. The Friendship Highway (starting as Phahonyothin as far as Saraburi) between Bangkok and Nakorn Ratchasima is very congested, much of the time. You can experience traffic jams in Klang Dong, which is a "small, rural town" at 9 or 10pm any day of the week. Many Major thoroughfares in greater Bangkok are relatively quiet by then, but traffic is often backed up on the uphill/downhill stretches of Friendship Highway.

Well, considering that America and its allies requested to use Thailand as a base for their bombing campaigns over IndoChina, one of the requirements should have been that they improve Thailand's infrastructure overall, not just that which connects with the air force bases they used.

When I say 2 American funded projects, I am talking about major highways. Of course it's possible the American military funded smaller roads from their bases that connected with the 2 major highways they helped to construct, but those are too small to be significant. The Japanese did fund a lot of road infrastructure in the 80s and 90s, but since the early 2000s, Thailand has generally become quite capable of building its own infrastructure. Assistance is needed only where the highways department lacks experience such as when it comes to road tunnels through terrain (of which there is only one in the entire country down near the Malaysian border). The highways department did say they would hire the Japanese to teach them how to build road tunnels back in 2020 but then Covid came, the borders closed and there has been no follow up since despite the world getting back to normal 2.5 years ago.

In the past, yes. Nowadays, generally no.

The north-south highway is the only road that connects Southern Thailand with the rest of the country via the narrow province of Prachuab Khiri Khan. There is no alternative; you'll find that out if you attempt to use secondary roads coming up from Thab Sakae, you can only drive less than 20km north before the road ends in a coconut plantation and you're forced back onto the main highway.

Again, only 2 projects that the Americans built and both connecting with the north east because that's where the air force bases were. Recent projects are entirely Thai funded.

The Americans did squat in terms of helping to design a grid road system for Bangkok. Nothing at all was done for Bangkok until the early 80s when the first expressway was built, with fast progress during the 90s and early 2000s but very gradual since then. Bangkok builds a new road only once every 5 years or so. The Srinakarin-Romklao road, connecting road between Phuttamonthon 1, 2 and 3, the new connecting road between Viphavadi Rangsit and Phahonyothin road south of Don Muang Airport (not yet opened to traffic) and the newly opened connecting road at Chaeng Wattana, 1km in length to the canal road that connects Chaeng Wattana with Ngam Wong Wan are the ONLY new road construction projects that aren't expressways to have been built or currently under construction over the past 10 years. Just 4 road projects (again, excluding expressways, of which 2 are currently under construction along Rama 2 highway).

Most? Only two, which are the Friendship Highway between Saraburi and Nong Khai and route 304 between Prachinburi and Nakorn Ratchasima.

Simple. Poor road design and layout. Too few roads for the volume of cars. A reliance on u-turns over intersections, a lack of right hand turns, no grid layout. Many dead end sois. Bangkok has only 8% of its surface area dedicated to roads. The international norm is 25%, in some cities its even 50%. 37% of all roads in Bangkok have no exit (dead ends). That's why everyone has to pile onto the main roads as there are few alternatives. Other cities are only marginally better; whether it's Nakorn Ratchasima, Chiang Mai etc. still no grid road system and thus few secondary road options.

Nonsense. Thailand can and will change and I'm fairly sure they'll go back to 30 days visa free fairly soon. Thailand is all about changing rules with little notice given. Thailand doesn't like foreigners anyway, why would they want to keep the horrible situation that you described going?

5000 Baht fine and maybe a day in jail...

Time to send this ____ back home. Boorish behavior in the extreme.