Could flexible work hours ease the loads and stress of Bangkok’s peaks?

By The Thaiger

 

 

Original article by Daniel Lorenzzo | Magazine Hong Kong

 

A study by navigation company TomTom conducted tests on metropolitan congestion. It’s used data from Bangkok, Mexico City, Jakarta and three Chinese cities – Chongqing, Beijing and Chengdu. The study points out that wherever there is an economic hub, congestion follows and frustration among commuters along with it.

 

40% of people in the surveys say their daily commute is the worst part of their day. Could the world’s most congested cities ease commuter woes with flexible working?

 

On public transport, travellers often experience crowded conditions, stress, discomfort, disruption, delay, feelings of time being ‘wasted’ and to top it off, their wallets are hit. But the scale of the congestion problems means it can’t be solved without businesses intervening and changing the working hours and flexibility of employee contracts.

 

Many companies in cities with high urban densities are already adopting hybrid models that incorporate flexible working. This can leverage a positive impact on their workforce and company expenditure, since capital and operational expenditure costs in the flexible working model are covered by providers.

 

Full story: https://thethaiger.com/hot-news/transport/could-flexible-work-hours-ease-the-loads-and-stress-of-bangkoks-peaks

 

 

-- © Copyright The Thaiger 2019-07-08

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What a waste of time, show me a city with 10+ million residents with maybe just as many vehicles and motorbikes that doesn't have commuting problems and stress and i'll show you Nirvana, flexible working hours in a country where most people work 7 days a week is utterly unattainable...

Stop the diversion and deflection...Thailand loves its stinky diesel engines as much as plastic bags and foam noodle soup bowls...

Edited July 7, 20197 yr by mok199

Many Thais already work flexible hours.

 

They start work when they feel fit and leave when they think they have done enough. ????

Remember when computers became cheaper and popular we were told that people wouldn't need to 'go to work' anymore, the commute was over, they could work from home. Thailand is run by a massive 'civil service' many of which couldn't be trusted to do any work at all if they were not being kept in an office and watched all day, which perfectly describes what happens in most of these work places. The convenience of the bosses is what matters not the conditions of the working peon.

the entire country operates on flex schedule ???? traffic is jacked up solid from dawn to dusk and then some... Poor infrastructure and volumn of vehicles. 

Just ban all private cars in the city, problem solved

 I’m having a house built in Buriram and these guys couldn’t be more flexible with their hours. Either they don’t show up or they show up just in time for the nap ????????

4 hours ago, geoffbezoz said:

Many Thais already work flexible hours.

 

They start work when they feel fit and leave when they think they have done enough. ????

So, what do they do with the other 23 hours!

5 hours ago, ezzra said:

What a waste of time, show me a city with 10+ million residents with maybe just as many vehicles and motorbikes that doesn't have commuting problems and stress and i'll show you Nirvana, flexible working hours in a country where most people work 7 days a week is utterly unattainable...

Got it in one.... 

compound that with father starting work at 06:00 mother at 07:00 kids going to school for 08:00

only one motorcycle etc etc etc...

complete waste of time !

More and cheaper public transports, also removing those nonsensical 200 seconds traffic lights would help.Bangkok is packed with cars from dawn to dusk and most of the times long after dusk, no flexibility would help with traffic.

Flexible hours make more sense with the BTS and MRT where there is actually hours when the average waiting time is significantly higher.

5 hours ago, ezzra said:

What a waste of time, show me a city with 10+ million residents with maybe just as many vehicles and motorbikes that doesn't have commuting problems and stress and i'll show you Nirvana, flexible working hours in a country where most people work 7 days a week is utterly unattainable...

Well they could try sleeping at home instead of at the workplace

Flexible working hours are not suitable for Thais. They can no longer give excuses being late for work and nothing else to blame for delays.

11 hours ago, webfact said:

Could flexible work hours ease the loads and stress of Bangkok’s peaks?

Better might be "telecommuting" (aka flexiplace, flexiwork).

Some of the seventeen most interesting stats about remote work:

• Keeps older workers in the workforce longer
• Positively impacts the environment
• Often leads to greater employee engagement
• Decreases real estate costs and overhead
• Increase worker productivity

https://remote.co/10-stats-about-remote-work/

https://www.owllabs.com/state-of-remote-work

70% of professionals globally work remotely — a phenomenon known as telecommuting — at least one day a week, while 53% work remotely for at least half of the week.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/30/70-percent-of-people-globally-work-remotely-at-least-once-a-week-iwg-study.html

“Those working in the Middle East and Africa (27 percent), Latin America (25 percent) and Asia-Pacific (24 percent) are considerably more likely than those in North America (9 percent) and Europe (9 percent) to telecommute ‘on a frequent basis,’” https://gigaom.com/2012/01/24/who-telecommutes-the-most-not-developed-nations-new-survey-finds/

Obviously, if you decrease the concentration of a workforce, you also decrease the need for ancillary services for consumer support and  create a greener environment.

I think a lot of congestion in the morning is coming from parents bringing their kids to school. Maybe they should consider opening schools later, that might help to ease morning rush hour a bit.

Depends on workload

Flex hours as a solution to commuting only works for white collar jobs.  Anything remotely in the service industry is out, leaving such a tiny percentage of commuters that it is meaningless.

 

A congestion charge won’t help; there simply isn’t enough of a transit network, and most of what exists is too slow for people going any distance.  You need to improve the transit network significantly first.

 

Then you need to solve the one-way streets and lack of turning options that force cars to travel in wide circles, and add overpasses/express lanes in many more locations.  Trying to solve the problem with today’s existing surface streets alone is going to limit effectiveness.

 

Happy that BTS/MRT/SRT exist, along with the Klong boats, but there is a whole lot of population and jobs more than 2km from a station still.

 

The smart money though would be to get the freaking fare systems interoperable between lines to facilitate transfers.  Then figure out how to get the trains running 15km/h faster and add automated secondary gates to all platforms.