High speed rail: Pattaya to Bangkok in well under an hour - around 300 baht!

[thaibeachlovers]

9 hours ago, Airbagwill said:

The fact is that in most cities/countries around the world, the pedestrian has equal rights with other road users .... in Thailand they are an afterthought.

Not even an after thought. Only poor people actually walk, so not worthy of consideration at all.

Lucky to even get overbridges. 

9 hours ago, Airbagwill said:

Another solution is the underpass, 

Joking right? they would soon be full of garbage and the destitute sleeping and begging, plus a mugger's dream.

[thaibeachlovers]

9 hours ago, Airbagwill said:

I don't have a "town car", but at least if you are driving yourself you are totally aware of the driving environment.

I have driven in North Africa, North America, Australia, Europe and S.E. Asia and I'm also educated in road safety, so I know a bad road when I see one. I've driven extensively throughout Thailand and certainly don't base my conclusions on the view from a bus window on the road from Bkk to Pattaya.

BTW...most of that route is now motorway.... Thailand can boast a total motorway mileage of less than 200 kilometers. UK has about 3500 km

LOL. You assume I haven't driven extensively in LOS.

Also driven in a few other countries, and some roads good, some bad. The new roads in LOS, despite your opinion, are pretty good, though the surface could be better, and liable to need repairs too soon after opening ( and always very badly repaired ). Regardless, the new main roads are superior to the old ones, like the Lampang to Phrae highway as far as the Uttaradit turnoff, which is a very dangerous road.

I certainly have no serious problems driving on them.

 

Your UK reference is pointless. The UK is far richer, has higher standards of construction, and has far more vehicles on the roads. Thailand is trying to improve the roads over very long distances with far less finance available.

 

I'm also educated in road safety

Me too, and I've got the certificate to prove it.

 

 

[Airbagwill]

2 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

LOL. You assume I haven't driven extensively in LOS.

Also driven in a few other countries, and some roads good, some bad. The new roads in LOS, despite your opinion, are pretty good, though the surface could be better, and liable to need repairs too soon after opening ( and always very badly repaired ). Regardless, the new main roads are superior to the old ones, like the Lampang to Phrae highway as far as the Uttaradit turnoff, which is a very dangerous road.

I certainly have no serious problems driving on them.

 

Your UK reference is pointless. The UK is far richer, has higher standards of construction, and has far more vehicles on the roads. Thailand is trying to improve the roads over very long distances with far less finance available.

 

I'm also educated in road safety

Me too, and I've got the certificate to prove it.

 

 

 

I don't think you are educated in road safety at all judging by your comments which show a deep lack of understanding of many of the issues involved. you views are like those of a driving instructor who basically has learned by rote a highway code and mistakes that for road safety.

 

As for the amount of driving you've done, Im basing my assessment on your own words...

" I've done my share of bus trips between Bkk and Pattaya, and they seem fine to me. I guess if one is in a town car it might seem rougher"

 

As I dsaid I don't know what you mean by "town car" and I don't know why uyou assume I have one.

I have driven half a million kilometers in Thailand over the last 24 years.

 

Your looking at the evidence are drawing illogical conclusions...regardless of finance a road has to do it’s job, and a substandard road doesn’t do that.

 

The new roads in Thailand are NOT very good, they are firstly badly designed and secondly poorly constructed, a point you acknowledge in your post.

“Thailand is trying to improve the roads over very long distances with far less finance available” - you agree that places like UK have better roads. There are international standards for road design and building but Thailand doesn’t seem to subscribe to these. 

 

As you point out Thailand doesn’t spend the required amount of money - for whatever reason - on building roads that are up to standard. 

 

“though the surface could be better, and liable to need repairs too soon after opening” .... ( and always very badly repaired )” 

 

EXACTLY!

 

The fact is they have the finances but they are skimping - the result is a dangerous road system poorly designed and built that quickly deteriorates under commercial traffic and then is strangled by repeated repair and reconstruction works that in turn are complete chaos.

 

This is a symptom of poor road building.

 

Thailand uses Asphalt and concrete construction techniques - the latter being initially stronger is correctly installed but once damaged - if it hasn’t got the correct specification of weight of traffic, then repairs become very costly.

 

Asphalt is preferred in on motorways in most countries as is is quieter and maintenance is quicker and cheaper. 

 

All these roads are only as good as their base and sub-base construction. ...and this is the corrupt contractors dream, loads of cutting corners and little chance of ever being found out.

 

BTW - 
Thailand has actually MORE registered vehicles than the UK.

Over one million ore trucks - the national limit is 53 tonnes

In the UK the national limit is 44 tones. Goods vehicles represent about 4% of all traffic and 5% in UK. So in Thailand you have  slightly less heavy goods vehicles with heavier payloads doing more damage to inferior roads.

 

Heavy trucks do immense damage to roads especially if they are not built to standard - and you agree that the standards of construction are lower in Thailand. As are the final roads themselves.

PS Thailand is not short of road building money either.

 

Thailand has less than 200 km of motorways, UK has 3500 km for about the same amount of traffic.

 

Corruption graft and nepotism are as said a classic way that roads are under-built - they may look five on the surface but underneath if corners are cut on base and sub base layers then problems await.

 

This can be seen on many new Thai roads as subsidence sets in and is repeatedly covered by surface repairs.

Furthermore the roads are not up to standard when it comes to safety - too wide to straight, they encourage speeding and things like lighting hard shoulders and drainage are frequently insufficient.

Lanes and road markings are often little more than an afterthought, they are poorly laid out indistinct, short lived and disappear in bad light or rain.

Safety barriers are frequently concrete when Armco, if correctly installed, would be a much better option.

Separation of traffic in opposite directions is the number one benefit of a dual carriage way road, but in Thailand this separation is done with the minimal amount of care - traffic still passes really close to oncoming and the barriers between are ineffective. You even see trees in the middle of some roads!!!.

As few roads in Thailand are built to motorway standards things like the cheap-and-nasty U-turn still exist all over the country - a single design that in itself must be responsible for 100s of deaths and injuries.

 

You say that the new roads are “superior” to the old ones, in that they are bigger and straighter, but this does not necessarily qualify them as “superior” - the higher speeds attained by vehicles and poor safety considerations actually makes the road potentially more dangerous than the old ones.

...and some of the intersections are so bad it beggars belief.  On top of a road system that really doesn’t qualify as “designed” there is also the problem of signage. - (including lanes of course) Thailand has yet to come up with any uniform and graphically clear sign system, Britain has Margaret Calvert to thank for that who genius is part of a UK tradition that includes such things as the underground map in London and the Br timetable signs.

 

The road system in Thailand was given the unregulated go-ahead decades ago as Thailand decided it a motor industry ( the 12^thlargest in the world) - a car for every Thai. Unfortunately lack of planning and infrastructure has lead to a road system in chaos and a toxic combination of light, vulnerable, private and heavy vehicles that is positively lethal and a system that is in short crying out for railways.

 

                        

[Airbagwill]

2 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Not even an after thought. Only poor people actually walk, so not worthy of consideration at all.

Lucky to even get overbridges. 

Joking right? they would soon be full of garbage and the destitute sleeping and begging, plus a mugger's dream.

read the rest of the sentence you quoted!!!!

[thaibeachlovers]

6 minutes ago, Airbagwill said:

Furthermore the roads are not up to standard when it comes to safety - too wide to straight, they encourage speeding and things like lighting hard shoulders and drainage are frequently insufficient.

I'm not going to respond to the rest ( I don't have enough time ) but I'm pretty sure lots of countries have intercity roads that are very straight for long distances, and completely devoid of lighting, and I've seen long roads in the US on films with no hard shoulders at all.

Thailand may have a lot of money that rich people have, but the public sector ( that builds the intercity roads ) is skint.

I'm not saying that the newer roads are perfect, but they are better than the old, and I certainly don't have a problem staying on them.

They deteriorate quickly as you pointed out because truck loadings are too high, but that's down to politicians, who disregard the limits construction should put on axle loadings, for the usual reasons.

13 minutes ago, Airbagwill said:

I don't think you are educated in road safety at all judging by your comments which show a deep lack of understanding of many of the issues involved.

I could be just as insulting back, but not worth it. You know nothing about me at all, except how you choose to interpret what I write.

I'm not going to get into a pi$$ing contest with you, as I can think of no bigger waste of time.

[Rimmer]

Topic is about High Speed Rail not roads please stay on topic.

[Airbagwill]

1 hour ago, thaibeachlovers said:

I'm not going to respond to the rest ( I don't have enough time ) but I'm pretty sure lots of countries have intercity roads that are very straight for long distances, and completely devoid of lighting, and I've seen long roads in the US on films with no hard shoulders at all.

Thailand may have a lot of money that rich people have, but the public sector ( that builds the intercity roads ) is skint.

I'm not saying that the newer roads are perfect, but they are better than the old, and I certainly don't have a problem staying on them.

They deteriorate quickly as you pointed out because truck loadings are too high, but that's down to politicians, who disregard the limits construction should put on axle loadings, for the usual reasons.

I could be just as insulting back, but not worth it. You know nothing about me at all, except how you choose to interpret what I write.

I'm not going to get into a pi$$ing contest with you, as I can think of no bigger waste of time.

"'except how you choose to interpret what I write." - and you are judged solely on that.

As said the rail system if implemented will take traffic off te roads both goods and business which in turn might help the roads a liuttle.

Sadly it has been shown that despite the benifits of a new rail system new roads actually generate more traffic of there own, so the reduction in Traffic on thwroads due to railways is far from a given.

[Dick Crank]

Great great victory! For those who despise mini vans and being near thai drivers even for a short trip!

 

[Airbagwill]

On 4/12/2018 at 6:30 PM, thaibeachlovers said:

I've seen long roads in the US on films with no hard shoulders at all.

Railways look like this for good reason, roads are quite a different matter and it was the roads in USA that you describe that first showed us this.

Now look at the Songkhran breakdown.

 

"Most accidents happened in straight part of the roads (64.0%), highways "

 

So anything we can do to take vehicles off these roads is a good thing., and an efficient disservice is a possible answer. It has been a success in Europe and if installed correctly will contributebe in Thailand too.

[Basil B]

High speed... certainly not the wheels of construction, probably not even get to completion before the wheels rust up and fall off. 

 

L.O.S. L.O.D. (Land of Dreams)

[JSixpack]

1 hour ago, Basil B said:

High speed... certainly not the wheels of construction, probably not even get to completion before the wheels rust up and fall off. 

 

L.O.S. L.O.D. (Land of Dreams)

 

TVF sneers will continue right up to completion and hope of wheels falling off will continue for years thereafter. Heard it ALL before. We'll check in again w/ you in a few years.

 

 

 

[David Walden]

On 3/28/2018 at 8:24 AM, missoura said:

Good idea if the project doesn't go off the rails. 

What's wrong with what is already there.  Buses, cars trucks all with only 2 speeds   Flat out and stop.

[Rimmer]

A couple of personal attacks have been removed and another edited of off topic content

[CLW]

What I'm spinning together in my mind is the idea of a private run train operator. It works in Vietnam as example of Asia and is common in many parts of europe.
The country's railway company is responsible for the infrastructure and rents it out to private companies.
After I saw what they've done as an upgrade to the 3rd class train cars here.
I mean I welcome every effort but that's hilarious.
Just paint everything new, new upholstered seats and led lights.
Could have done so much better.
But I guess unfortunately lot of money went into the pockets of someone.

[metisdead]

A post using foreign language has been removed as this is the English language side of the forum. 

[overherebc]

On 28/03/2018 at 8:25 AM, hyku1147 said:

Translation: "We are looking for test dummies."

Trials have started in Nakhon-Nowhere.