Thai PM wants staggered hours to continue for traffic sake

By Pattaya Mail

 

  

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha.

 

BANGKOK – Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has ordered officials to study permanent staggered hours after the end of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic because the policy could help ease traffic congestion.

 

Staggered hours, working from home and learning from home could remain in the future to solve traffic problems, he said. He assigned the Education Ministry and the Ministry of Higher Education Science Research and Innovation to study staggered school hours for the purpose.
 

According to the prime minister, governmental organizations have introduced staggered working hours which start at 7.30am, 8.30am and 9.30am.

 

Full story: https://www.pattayamail.com/coronavirus/thai-pm-wants-staggered-hours-to-continue-for-traffic-sake-299625

 

-- © Copyright Pattaya Mail 2020-05-14

 

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His minders want to up their game abit .. Looks like someone's laser dotting him with that green dot .. 

Obviously it won't work for all businesses but it's actually not a bad idea, flattening the rush-hour curve (where have I heard that expression before).

 

On office days I'm usually in by 6.30 and out at 15.30 (I keep the same hours when working from home too) missing the traffic at both ends of the day and I get a nice long evening with Wifey and the dogs. Of course there's always the occasional fly in the ointment when "The Management" call a meeting at 5PM on a Friday.

 

One of my employers in the UK had true flexitime, office core hours (have to be there) of 10AM to 3PM and a minimum of 35 hours total per week. Suited the early birds (like me) and the late risers and generally worked well in an engineering development environment.

 

A post using trolling images has been removed. 

Wouldn't be a good idea Mr. PM to clear the giant backlogs created by this pandemic before even considering staggered working hours? you have many government departments that were idle for 2 months and many people are waiting to them to get back to work, i myself waiting for packages from Europe for two months now to be delivered and i'm sure i'm not the only one...

The Green dot is where the stake or silver tipped bullet must enter....or the cross must touch.  Tis obvious he has a sunblocker shield so the sun will not effect him.  

Athenians imposed a rule of odd number plates one day, even numbers the next...no drastic measures needed to reduce traffic...of course affluent people could have two cars.

You can't fix this system without upgrading the infrastructure. The other issue is service personnel work early in the morning to late at night to provide for all workers. They need to look at fixing public transport, adding more trains to MRT and BTS would also help.

47 minutes ago, baansgr said:

Athenians imposed a rule of odd number plates one day, even numbers the next...no drastic measures needed to reduce traffic...of course affluent people could have two cars.

Or two sets of number/license plates. Everybody could do that.

It will never happen. 

Another good proposal by our PM Khun Prayut Chan O Cha, as he indicated the staggered work hours will assist in traffic congestion especially in the mornings.

6 minutes ago, steven100 said:

Another good proposal by our PM Khun Prayut Chan O Cha, as he indicated the staggered work hours will assist in traffic congestion especially in the mornings.

yes it will assist in ensuring there is congestion all morning long as more people are on the road during all hours of the day....lol

Easier than getting the police to do their jobs I suppose...

 

2 hours ago, ezzra said:

Wouldn't be a good idea Mr. PM to clear the giant backlogs created by this pandemic before even considering staggered working hours? you have many government departments that were idle for 2 months and many people are waiting to them to get back to work, i myself waiting for packages from Europe for two months now to be delivered and i'm sure i'm not the only one...

You didn't notice that nearly all international flights have stopped?  What have staggered working hours got to do with that?  Your mail from Europe being delayed is not because your postman couldn't be bothered to work.  

Just needed to start thee day with a moan / bash I guess....

4 minutes ago, ParkerN said:

Easier than getting the police to do their jobs I suppose...

 

Eh???

After a year he said he will fix the traffic problem in a month?  Not able now this is his solution the Virus?????

Since 1-2 weeks they started parking on the road again causing HUGE congestion....mostly the taxi's and minivans do it, sometimes they even park on 2 lanes in front of malls and skytrain stations.

 

So Prayuth has to order the police to do their job and repell them...it's insane and VERY annoying...

It actually makes sense. I was trying to bring this up 15 years ago at my previous company where staff could come to office before the bad traffic starts, and get back home before all the evening traffic jams, and have afternoon off to themselves. I believed it would have saved them many hours each month on travel, and some time in the afternoon before sun comes down to do whatever they please. However... the staff was adamantly against it, so I dropped the plan. Too lazy to wake up early.

Funny enough some of my colleagues now (well before work from home) would get up at 4.30, drive to office and sleep in cars in parking lots to be at the office on time.

Overall this would be good to ease traffic, load on public transport, but... can't see people accepting it.

Sounds like we are just going to end up with 12 hours of bad traffic a day instead of 8 hours.  Awesome!  He does realise most people still arnt working right? 

4 hours ago, Crossy said:

Obviously it won't work for all businesses but it's actually not a bad idea, flattening the rush-hour curve (where have I heard that expression before).

 

On office days I'm usually in by 6.30 and out at 15.30 (I keep the same hours when working from home too) missing the traffic at both ends of the day and I get a nice long evening with Wifey and the dogs. Of course there's always the occasional fly in the ointment when "The Management" call a meeting at 5PM on a Friday.

 

One of my employers in the UK had true flexitime, office core hours (have to be there) of 10AM to 3PM and a minimum of 35 hours total per week. Suited the early birds (like me) and the late risers and generally worked well in an engineering development environment.

 

So obvious, yet so rare...

In the 70's my school had rolling lunchtimes... yet my wife's office is bog standard rush hour to rush hour. She has to arrive more than 40 minutes early to cut her conjestion by about 20 minutes. Even a ten minute shift in start/finish time from the hour would make a huge difference.

 

The fact is that they don't really care. The same way that her office has a basic policy to work alternative Saturdays, but there's rarely any work to do on Saturday... instead of fixing a monthly or weekly schedule with even minor flexitime.

 

During Covid, they told her NOT to work on Saturday, but 'make up for it' by staying an hour late every day. This also adds 3 hours to her weekly travel, yet she always stays late when her work isn't finished, and could simply leave when it's done...

People of Thailand should be grateful for having a such a omni-talent brilliant leader who begets all the detail policies for the benefit of suffering people. His title should be also 'The great Leader of People's Democratic Republic of Thailand'. 

2 hours ago, steven100 said:

Another good proposal by our PM Khun Prayut Chan O Cha, as he indicated the staggered work hours will assist in traffic congestion especially in the mornings.

It's certainly not at rocket science level, considering a 5 year old could come up with the same idea. 

Traffic is getting worse again according to friends who travel into BKK. It was great during the total lockdown. So if they can keep up staggered working hours and working from home then it would benefit a lot of people.

 

This is an actual good idea from the PM. Not often do i see something that is actually a good idea take form. However i doubt that it will be picked up. Many Thai business owners hate that people can work from home as it gives them less control. Plus it cant be done for everyone. 

1 hour ago, Artisi said:

It's certainly not at rocket science level, considering a 5 year old could come up with the same idea. 

Past past illustrates the future.

 

When trying to decide whether Mr Prayuth is in the process of making a genius master plan, what is in the process of creating another cock-up, one needs to reflect on his past history. How often in the past has Mr Prayuth had a genius master plan pop out of his brain?

 

 

4 hours ago, baansgr said:

Athenians imposed a rule of odd number plates one day, even numbers the next...no drastic measures needed to reduce traffic...of course affluent people could have two cars.

But what about the vehicles here mostly m/c that don't bother with number plates?

Seeing as Chaeng Watthana and most other Thai government offices haven't even brought in the idea of staggered lunch breaks (most of the places fully shut for one hour) then there is no way something like this is plausible. Another Prayut idea with little thought or planning as to how it would be implemented. 

7 hours ago, webfact said:

Thai PM wants staggered hours to continue for traffic sake

Makes for a lot of sense, if offices etc can stagger the start finish times or encourage work from home where possible it would make an impact on the normal rush-hour nightmare.

Start with government enterprises to pave the way ?

I seriously wonder why so many commenting here are considering home office as such a unfeasible thing. Big companies can do that easily! Its working well in many countries now. 

Criticizing every potential move towards other solutions then what these keyboardwarrior are used to is their hoppy as they have nothing else to do than this.

Get off your f... a.. 

I imagine myself in his position. I suspect the first priority is to try and arrange for a quick and as easy as possible flow for people to earn an income again and to feed their families. We don't have to reinvent the wheel even if the WHo and Syringe Billy are pushing for it.

The headline states "continue with staggered hours" as far as i can see there have been no companies operating staggered hours.

 

Have been working in Greater BKK since the supposed lockdown started and apart from an initial 2 week period the traffic has been pretty normal.