Pattaya: Monorail favored over trams as plans set to go to cabinet - only 45 baht end to end

 

Picture: Manager Online

 

It looks as though Pattaya will get a monorail system and not trams.

 

And bargain fares might mean an end to complaints about gouging of tourists and locals at the resort.

 

According to an official responsible for a study, recommendations are soon to be made to City Hall and subsequently the Thai cabinet for a three phase monorail system to be built at the eastern seaboard resort. 

 

Actual building could start as early as 2023 with the first Green Line phase expected to be completed by 2026. 

 

Survey coordinator Siraphop Suwannaken told Manager that a monorail is best, especially as land appropriation would be kept to a minimum, something City Hall was keen on. 

 

Picture: Manager Online

 

The Green Line will connect the city with the high speed rail station that in turn is part of the Eastern Economic Corridor development.

 

The HST will connect Don Muang - Suvarnabhumi - U-Tapao - it has been called the Three Airport Link.

 

Fares on the Green Line will be 16 baht for the first kilometer and no more than 45 baht for the entire 13 stop route. 

 

This could be music to the ears of Pattayans who have complained about "baht bus" rip offs and taxi fleecing, notes Thaivisa. 

 

The second and third phases of the multi billion baht monorail would see construction of the Purple Line in 2027-31 from Nong Prue to Muang Pattaya 8 School and the Red Line that will traverse Jomtien Sai 2, Pattaya Sai 2 to the Dolphin Roundabout. 

 

Picture: Manager Online

 

The monorail will run on an elevated concrete beam above the road surface. 

 

The whole project includes a huge park and ride building, hotel, condominium, retail and sky park developments. 

 

Source: Manager Online

 

-- © Copyright Thai Visa News 2020-10-07

 

- Whatever you're going through, the Samaritans are here for you

- Follow Thaivisa on LINE for breaking COVID-19 updates

Trams in Pattaya, with the constant flooding ??
Monorail only sensible solution.
But I do not mean that this will ever happen, it is just another opportunity for the rich to get richer with feasibility studies, forming committees and exchanging brown envelopes

As I said before   "Bangkok on Sea"  

will there be lifts so people with disabilities  can use it ?  in fact just dragging a suit case up and down the sky train stairs is a bit of a hassle.

 

8 minutes ago, webfact said:

This could be music to the ears of Pattayans who have complained about "baht bus" rip offs and taxi fleecing, notes Thaivisa. 

The baht bus system works well enough  its cheap and very convenient, no stairs to navigate  if you have luggage or shopping

they can even take you direct to your door for a bigger fee of course.

The rip off come from the "Taxi Meter"   who refuse to use the meter..why have they been allowed to get away with that for so long ?

It took them 4 years to build a tunnel under Pattaya Klang. You won't see this until 2050.

As well as the Chinese tourists, we can now expect a huge influx of Cambodian workers on this massive project. 

Lol  - 45 baht "end to end". More like "Thai - 45 baht, Foreigner - 450 baht".

Then they'll get together to scratch their heads and discuss why foreigners aren't using it.

4 hours ago, johng said:

in fact just dragging a suit case up and down the sky train stairs is a bit of a hassle.

Never been in a skytrain station that doesn't have an up escalator for many years ( took a few years from opening to get them though ). Only at one end though. I always seemed to enter at the wrong end.

The airport train was without though. Fancy that- people going to the airport have bags- how bizarre!

Maybe a moot point...but..i thought Pattaya was more or less a ghost town now? With hardly any body there?

 

Who would be using it? Not a sarcastic comment, it could have been a great idea, when Pattaya was "booming"...

 

Or is it just another grand plan?

IMO only the usual suspects will benefit, when after a few years it will be cancelled due to pressure from the baht bus collective.

1 minute ago, welshguy said:

Maybe a moot point...but..i thought Pattaya was more or less a ghost town now? With hardly any body there?

 

Who would be using it? Not a sarcastic comment, it could have been a great idea, when Pattaya was "booming"...

 

Or is it just another grand plan?

It'll take years before it opens if it does. If corona lasts that long we are all doomed.

Makes sense...Monorail vs. Tram

If you are retired living in the country, you'll likely be gone to God when this dream is completed!

1 hour ago, ChrisY1 said:

If you are retired living in the country, you'll likely be gone to God when this dream is completed!

Don,t you mean "nightmare" ?

Presently Pattaya has the best public transport system I have ever encountered, a wait of usually only a few seconds, and from one end of the "city" to the other for only 10 Baht !

Therefore I find the "only 45 Bht" a little puzzling ???? However, as long as they keep the option of using the Songtaews, we can only hope ????

7 hours ago, webfact said:

 

It looks as though Pattaya will get a monorail system and not trams

combine the two and when beach road floods it can be a big dipper as well ..

Elevated tracks, though expensive, are always going to make more sense here. Way too much congestion on the ground. It is the only way to get the speed that is needed. Regardless of the cost, Thailand desperately needs far more high speed transport options. The highways here are a nightmare. 

Can’t have Trams  with all the Chinese busses blocking everything 

Monorail bridges bla bla but nearly bankrupt. And refuse to welcome farang..is there a asylum attached to gov house. The West wing institution for mentally touched.

9 hours ago, webfact said:

The Green Line will connect the city with the high speed rail station

Um, OK. From where to where exactly ? I'm guessing they are waiting for one of the main roads (Pattaya South, Central or North) to be resurfaced and then they will come along weeks later to start tearing it up and constructing the monorail line.

It will be Pattaya Nua no doubt.
The Purple Line will go from the intersection of Pattaya Tai/#2 Road (where the Muang 8 school is) to "Nong Prue" which could be anywhere on the Darkside.
The Red line will run from Jomtien #2 road to Pattaya #2 road and down to the Dolphin Roundabout at the bottom of Pattaya Nua.

Which would mean the Green line probably runs from the Roundabout up North Pattaya Road and over to the not yet built High Speed Train station.

Once it's done (if ever) it might make things a lot easier for a lot of locals.

Getting to Immigration for example, or to some of the big stores/malls downtown like T-21. There may be stops near places like Friendship/Tukcom, Central Festival and Foodland for example.
And of course, the big one right near Jomtien Soi 5, which may prove to be the most popular stop of them all.

Not so many out of control pickups up there must be the reasoning behind it ????

21 hours ago, webfact said:

And bargain fares might mean an end to complaints about gouging of tourists and locals at the resort.

There's optimism for you.

13 hours ago, spidermike007 said:

Elevated tracks, though expensive, are always going to make more sense here. Way too much congestion on the ground. It is the only way to get the speed that is needed. Regardless of the cost, Thailand desperately needs far more high speed transport options. The highways here are a nightmare. 

Elevated tracks will not "float" in the air they will take up much needed real estate on the already crowded Pattaya roads.

 

The bus system we had several years ago, with 3 lines, was a big flop as nobody used it. Too expensive, long time between buses and long distance between stops.

 

For convenience, cost and flexibility it would be much better to keep the baht buses but regulate them better.

 

In the end there will still be baht busses around to cater for routes not covered by the mono rail.

 

21 minutes ago, pattjock said:

Elevated tracks will not "float" in the air they will take up much needed real estate on the already crowded Pattaya roads.

True, however as noted in the OP article, the monorail would take up less of that much needed real estate than a tram system. 

 

21 minutes ago, pattjock said:

The bus system we had several years ago, with 3 lines, was a big flop as nobody used it. Too expensive, long time between buses and long distance between stops.

The bus system was a flop but the reasons you mentioned could have been rectified over time. What really killed it was the baht bus mafia actively interfering with the operation of the buses. They would deliberately park in the bus loading zones, forcing the buses to stop in the traffic lanes to load/unload passengers. The baht buses would deliberately drive at a crawl in front of the buses forcing them to either have to cut into other lanes or follow the baht bus at a crawl, resulting in long delays between stops.

I'm sure there were other impediments that happened that didn't make the public news as well and in the end the bus lines died before they even had a chance. 
The city chose not to confront the baht bus mafia and instead shut down the buses.

I'm sure if you went back in time to any major city in the world, be it Bangkok, London, New York, Tokyo or wherever and looked at the news before any of those places started their first "mass transit" experiments, you'd hear the same arguments. 

"Oh, they take up too much real estate". "What's wrong with the current system ?" "This will never get built in our lifetimes." "It's all a scam to pad the wallets of the politicians and their friends." (And so on and so on.)

And eventually, all of those places built mass transit systems that everyone (now) takes for granted. And all of them still have buses and taxi services as well.

Just like Pattaya will have. One day. Maybe in this lifetime. 

As long as the population on the planet continues to grow, people will continues to flock to the cities, which will continue to expand as will the need to transport those people. Eventually, after long periods of griping and hair pulling, most moderate to large cities will install some form of mass transit to help cope with that demand and to hopefully reduce the other traffic on the roadways.

Once a city is "established", there is rarely room for it to do things like add more roads or widen the ones it has. Space and land are limited and trying to buy blocks of land to expand the traffic network would be prohibitively expensive.
The only way they can usually go is "up". 

Look at Bangkok now. It wasn't always like that, with the elevated roadways and mass transit system that leave some streets permanently in the shade now (or so it seems). Some places look like they came right out of the set of Blade Runner (the original). Or maybe they were the inspiration for the sets in the movie.
And most of that has happened in the last 50 years (or less).

Pattaya will eventually end up looking like that as well. Come back here in 50 years (lol) and you won't recognize the place. Except maybe for Happy A-Go-Go which will probably still be there, even if it's not a go-go bar anymore.

13 minutes ago, Kerryd said:

I'm sure there were other impediments that happened that didn't make the public news as well and in the end the bus lines died before they even had a chance

The first time they tried buses one of the drivers was murdered I believe by a Songthew driver.

commuters Thais especially complained that the buses where too expensive not frequent enough and didn't stop where they wanted to get off.

1 hour ago, Kerryd said:

I'm sure if you went back in time to any major city in the world, be it Bangkok, London, New York, Tokyo or wherever and looked at the news before any of those places started their first "mass transit" experiments, you'd hear the same arguments. 
 

I'm not sure I would compare Pattaya with Bangkok, London, New York and Tokyo. Pattaya has a very old layout and infrastructure that needs to be fixed before adding a monorail.

 

MRT works fine in Bangkok as the traffic is more congested, the trips are generally longer and the travelers are generally much more affluent than the average Pattaya traveler. In Pattaya the trips are short and an additional 10 to 20 Baht on the fare is a lot for many.

 

A good bahtbus/taxi system would be much better until the rest of the infrastructure is sorted out.

They are still digging up most of the streets here every few years, with the addition of a monorail this would be unbarable.

 

 

In the end I'm not to worried that this will happen in the next 10 to 15 years. These systems are always operated by private companies and there is no way any private capital will enter into this. The only reason to build it would be to generate a lot of money for some people, after that it would be another Waterfront.

 

Bangkok is OK as it solved travel time for millions of people, that is not the concern in Pattaya.

 

Most people would still use the baht bus as they did when the last attempt of a new system was carried out.

 

More regulations of baht buses and taxis would fix the public transport system in Pattaya for the next 10 years, then maybe a monorail could be re-investigated.

On 10/7/2020 at 10:14 AM, johng said:

As I said before   "Bangkok on Sea"  

will there be lifts so people with disabilities  can use it ?  in fact just dragging a suit case up and down the sky train stairs is a bit of a hassle.

 

The baht bus system works well enough  its cheap and very convenient, no stairs to navigate  if you have luggage or shopping

they can even take you direct to your door for a bigger fee of course.

The rip off come from the "Taxi Meter"   who refuse to use the meter..why have they been allowed to get away with that for so long ?

and will there be escalators to the platforms....NO STEPS ???

On 10/8/2020 at 2:05 AM, Kerryd said:

Um, OK. From where to where exactly ? I'm guessing they are waiting for one of the main roads (Pattaya South, Central or North) to be resurfaced and then they will come along weeks later to start tearing it up and constructing the monorail line.

It will be Pattaya Nua no doubt.
The Purple Line will go from the intersection of Pattaya Tai/#2 Road (where the Muang 8 school is) to "Nong Prue" which could be anywhere on the Darkside.
The Red line will run from Jomtien #2 road to Pattaya #2 road and down to the Dolphin Roundabout at the bottom of Pattaya Nua.

Which would mean the Green line probably runs from the Roundabout up North Pattaya Road and over to the not yet built High Speed Train station.

Once it's done (if ever) it might make things a lot easier for a lot of locals.

Getting to Immigration for example, or to some of the big stores/malls downtown like T-21. There may be stops near places like Friendship/Tukcom, Central Festival and Foodland for example.
And of course, the big one right near Jomtien Soi 5, which may prove to be the most popular stop of them all.

Had Pattaya had some proper planning it would not be necessary to even consider tram vs monorail.

Some of us know it'll never happen and is only so the usual suspects benefit.

On 10/8/2020 at 2:54 PM, Kerryd said:

Pattaya will eventually end up looking like that as well. Come back here in 50 years (lol) and you won't recognize the place. Except maybe for Happy A-Go-Go which will probably still be there, even if it's not a go-go bar anymore.

Indeed it will, but outside the area of Naklua to Bali Hi, Beach to Sukhumvit. That's where the real development is.