Traffic Congestion Throughout Bangkok On The First Day Of Schools

[george]

Traffic congestion throughout Bangkok on the first day of schools

BANGKOK: -- Some Bangkok schools were reopened Monday morning, resulting to thick traffic jams on main roads. The traffic was packed especially the parts in front of famous private schools in Sathorn area, which saw a line of cars as far as the Taksin Bridge.

Metropolitan Police therefore made haste to encourage parents to park at designated areas to drop their kids off, while a thousand traffic police officers were dispatched to facilitate commuters on the allschool opening on Wednesday (May 16).

Deputy Superintendent 4 of Traffic Control Centre, Pol Lt Col Wannarong Wonglee, said the traffic volume yesterday was thicker than other days because many schools had reopened especially in front of Assumption College on Sathorn Road which saw the tail reaching Taksin Bridge and a Skhumvit Road's UTurn at the mount of Soi Sukhumvit 64. He urged motorists to avoid these two spots during rush hours. He also said city police had a policy to seriously tackle school term traffic jams and planned ahead of the school opening by contacting schools to ensure parents prepared their kids from home so they could quickly drop off their kids at schools. A ceremony to dispatch some 1,000 city officers would be held at 3pm to facilitate traffic flows when all schools are opened on Wednesday (May 16), he added.

The city police's Traffic Control Centre yesterday afternoon reported that, during the morning rushhours yesterday, nearly all roads leading to inner Bangkok were heavily congested - including Lat Phrao, VibhavadiRangsit, Phaholyothin, Ratchadaphisek, Rama 9, Phetburi, Sukhumvit, Rama 4, Sathorn, expressways and roads from the Thon Buri side. The traffic flows slowly moved along but were particular bad in front of famous private schools such as the inbound Sathorn where located the Bangkok Christian College and Assumption College, the report said. With many using cars to send kids to schools, police's earlier instruction to use designated dropoff areas - about 200 to 300 meters away from the schools - received little cooperations from parents, the report said.

Some parents even blocked the traffic to walk their kindergarteners or first graders - who were not yet familiar with schools - to classes, prompting officials to plead for cooperation and hand out leaflets on how to prepare kids for quick dropoff, the report said. However, the overall traffic control yielded a degree of satisfactory result, as many officers spread to key intersections and diligently accommodate flows, the report said, the traffic in the evening rushhours should be smoother, as the police meeting in the afternoon learned and sorted the problems found in the morning.

-- The Nation 2007-05-14

[sonnyJ]

Anyone knows how was the situation 365 days ago?

Actually I was at suan phlu immigration this afternoon and everything appeared normal by then.

[Ijustwannateach]

Sigh... well, I guess the vacation had to end sooner or later. Back to the salt mines, everyone!!!

[Pepe']

Sat in traffic for 2.5 hours one day on the way into BKK from Samut Sakorn.

Makes ya wonder. Is there something wrong with this picture?

[rychrde]

Same thing happens in London. Traffic from school-runs is huge. Morning drop-off and afternoon pick-up times to be avoided. Maybe should go back to the old school bus idea, except children no longer always attend their local school. In London 'bus lanes' are strictly enforced, which leads to more traffic for all the other vehicles but at least the public transportation kinda works. Any chance of that in Bangkok?

Also, London now has a charge for driving inside the city centre. This has been so successful at detering drivers that projected income lower than expected so it has proved an expensive exercise in annoying people. As it involves setting up large numbers of spy cameras to keep track of movement this should prove an attractive option for the current regime.

[astral]

Central London is a pleasure these days.

The buses move quickly.

Crossing the street is easy.

Bangkok would do well to follow the example.

[Plus]

http://nationmultimedia.com/search/page.ne...amp;id=30034149

Impressed by the success of London and Singapore, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg last month proposed congestion pricing. It will require motorists to pay US$8 (Bt275) to enter inner Manhattan.

Some believe this is the most controversial and politically courageous of Bloomberg's 127 initiatives to reduce carbon emissions and improve quality of life in the Big Apple.

Apirak [bangkok Governor] admires Bloomberg's courage but quickly dismisses the possibility of introducing similar measures here.

"Our public transport system is not ready. If we introduce something so dramatic without first educating people of the need to change our lifestyles they may resist - or outright oppose any future initiatives to address global warming," Apirak said.

"What do you expect from a city still fighting a very basic disciplinary problem - littering.

"People still spit on the street. One man did it inches from me recently," he noted.

He admitted Bangkok needed better public transport before it could force cars off the streets.

[ColPyat]

"Our public transport system is not ready. If we introduce something so dramatic without first educating people of the need to change our lifestyles they may resist - or outright oppose any future initiatives to address global warming," Apirak said.

Yeah, again arguing away from the real problem here, our governor. That problem is private schools causing serious traffic jams, and a very noticeable difference between holidays and school terms. ALL of those schools have van services that pick kids up from home, and return them after school as well. There is no reason why parents would have to pick up their spoiled brats and parking in front of the schools in sometimes two to three rows, and cops being to intimidated to charge them with traffic obstruction.

[Plus]

.. cops being to intimidated to charge them with traffic obstruction.

That's what Apirak said - this law would be unenforceable.

Even more, he said that if they fumbled something in the name of Global Warming they will never be able to mention it again.

[ffm]

Problem here is that the school's vans don't pick up the kids in the morning of the the first school day. We have to send them tomorrow morning but they will be returned by the van. Probably they don't want the combined hassle of working out the routes, finding the students and setting up a timetable for pick up all at once. Much easier if the first run is going home.

[bkk_mike]

"Our public transport system is not ready. If we introduce something so dramatic without first educating people of the need to change our lifestyles they may resist - or outright oppose any future initiatives to address global warming," Apirak said.

Yeah, again arguing away from the real problem here, our governor. That problem is private schools causing serious traffic jams, and a very noticeable difference between holidays and school terms. ALL of those schools have van services that pick kids up from home, and return them after school as well. There is no reason why parents would have to pick up their spoiled brats and parking in front of the schools in sometimes two to three rows, and cops being to intimidated to charge them with traffic obstruction.

So says someone who doesn't have kids.

Sorry - sent my kids on the bus when I was in Tokyo - they had to leave home at 6am to get to school on time, because the bus had to pick up other kids after them, and is still going through the same traffic. - Driving them ourselves, they get an extra hour in bed.

Add in that, with more than one child - it's cheaper to drive them yourself. (The vans aren't exactly priced cheaply, and additional children are the same price, despite being a single pickup).

In mornings, it's easy enough to drop off the kids (that aren't still in kindergarten anyway). The only issue is you're travelling at the same time as everyone else. Picking them up is another matter. Their school requires that they're collected from the classroom (since that knife incident a few years ago), so you HAVE to park somewhere.

[andy1308]

In the past few weeks, both travelling to and from work, I can't help but notice the number of vehicles with just one occupant. It's not addressing the 'school run' problem but having some kind of car-pooling initiative, or only allowing taxis and tuk-tuks with passengers on certain key roads at certain times, might work?

[Rhys]

Once... a beaut.. of a traffic jam was created in the early am... It appears, that the guard or someone ...did not have the key to the gate... 5555555555555

[LindsayBKK]

There is supposed to be a road closure happening at Rajprarop rd to work on the new Makkasan Railway line, I don't think this will help either. This month I heard it was to be closed.

[samran]

"Our public transport system is not ready. If we introduce something so dramatic without first educating people of the need to change our lifestyles they may resist - or outright oppose any future initiatives to address global warming," Apirak said.

Yeah, again arguing away from the real problem here, our governor. That problem is private schools causing serious traffic jams, and a very noticeable difference between holidays and school terms. ALL of those schools have van services that pick kids up from home, and return them after school as well. There is no reason why parents would have to pick up their spoiled brats and parking in front of the schools in sometimes two to three rows, and cops being to intimidated to charge them with traffic obstruction.

you can't blame him though, any govenor of BKK is largely powerless to change traffic conditions given that traffic management is shared between something like 8 different departments who have resisted any threat to their power for the past decade or so.

[Plus]

London's mayor gives Bangkok advice on easing its traffic congestion

"Get cars off the streets" is the strongest piece of advice leaders of some of the world's greenest capitals can give to their counterparts from cities plagued by pollution and congestion.

In no uncertain terms, they argue it is the most effective way to improve the quality of life and reduce carbon emissions.

London Mayor Ken Livingstone's "congestion pricing" has become a model success story that drew attention, whether awe or scepticism, from many mayors and city managers attending the second day of the "Large Cities Climate Summit" yesterday in New York.

Addressing the panel discussing "Beating the Congestion and Surviving Your Next Election" at the four-day summit of some 40 of the world's largest cities, Livingstone acknowledged the fears of many elected mayors that their political future could be jeopardised by drastic measures to tax drivers for taking their cars to trade and business centres.

"When I introduced the measure four years ago, my poll rating was bad, the media were hostile and gave disastrous predictions; it was all doom and gloom, no one would drive, retail shops and businesses in the controlled area would have to shut down," he recalled.

"Tony Blair wanted to appear as if he had nothing do with it. The government gave us money to expand the bus system but hoped nobody knew about it."

But he then listed how the measure improved flows of traffic in the city: the number of cars in the centre of London has been reduced by 38 per cent, a rate Livingstone said was twice more than he anticipated. Commercial vehicles increased, the number of cyclists increased 80 per cent, while bus riders increased from four to six million a day.

As a result, carbon emissions from the transport sector reduced 25 per cent.

Livingstone noted that his political courage to introduce the measure came from being pressured by London's business community. Congestion in the city cost ฃ2 billion (Bt140 billion) in business losses a year. London had lost its competitiveness and businesses threatened to relocate elsewhere, he said.

The mayor of London said he expanded the controlled areas by doubling them early this year and increased charges from ฃ5 to ฃ8 with similar hostility from the media, but opinion polls stated that his political approval went up.

"Politicians like to underestimate the intelligence of the general public - trust your people that they recognise the problem. In four years my poll has gone up 14 per cent and they don't want to vote for my rival because they fear my rival would remove congestion pricing."

Bangkok Governor Apirak Kosayodhin told Livingstone he was interested in his success story but had little clue how a gridlocked city like Thailand's capital with 5.5 millions cars on the street every day could begin the measure without a good public transit system.

"We only have 50km combined of Skytrain and subway. The buses are run by the central government. We want to introduce the charge but don't have a proper mass transit system. Do we need to have the system in place first or could we start now in the inner city?"

Livingstone's advice is to improve the bus system because subways take a long time to construct. He said in the case of London, the number of buses increased from 6,000 to 8,000 along with the introduction of new routes, and the private sector played a key role in helping with finance.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg praised Livingstone's scheme. If he has his way, drivers who want to enter inner Manhattan will have to pay US$8 (Bt267).

The Mayor of Copenhagen, Klaus Bondam, said he had wanted to introduce congestion charging for some time but the right-wing central government opposed the idea by not issuing legislation.

"Copenhagen is much smaller than Bangkok with only 500,000 residents, but noise and air pollution from the traffic bothers our residents, so we want to discourage cars from getting into the city. We will continue to fight for what is right," he said.

Nantiya Tangwisutijit

The Nation

>>>>>>

Does anyone think it will work here? I tried to take a bus not long time ago. Twenty minutes wait, two buses passed in the middle lane without even slowing down at the bus stop - I'm not doing it again.

[cclub75]

Does anyone think it will work here? I tried to take a bus not long time ago. Twenty minutes wait, two buses passed in the middle lane without even slowing down at the bus stop - I'm not doing it again.

Well it's the only solution.

A few years ago Red Ken was seen as a dangerous (and red ;-) ) lunatic. But his ideas are gaining pace now.

It seems basic, but actually it's the only solution : more and more cars it's not sustainable for large cities. I mean, even with a great mass transit system, people will always (with cheap gasoline) take their cars.

So the only solution : hit the pocket. Very high toll to enter the city. It's unfair, yep, but not more than people who can afford to buy a Jaguar car and other a pickup.

As for Bangkok... well we could be pessimistic. No long term planning. Actually, no planning at all, except "more roads".

I guess we would need something else to change the situation. For instance a liter of gasoline at 60 THB... It will clear the streets for sure !

[Plus]

No it won't. Peole drive not because they like it, it's because they have to. No one drives for pleasure here.

I suppose people will pay the tax, not matter how high it is - they must go to work and there are no alternatives to cars.

To seriously reduce traffic the tax must be very very high.

What Apirak worried about earlier is civil disobedience - police is no position to enforce the law on Central Business District drivers.

[younghusband]

The congestion charge has been a success, but Ken Livingstone is overreaching himself in seeking to extend it to the West lying suburbs of the city.Politically this is a gift for David Cameron's Conservatives.I expect the clunking fist of Gordon Brown will intervene.

Here in Bangkok I don't see how the middle classes can abandon their cars without a massive improvement in the quality and service of public transport.I would not entrust my 10 year old daughter to public transport here.I would have thought, while granting the chicken and egg aspect, that the necessary investment should be made before applying congestion charges.

There is also to be considered the mindset of the senior Thai businessman, official,army General etc that cannot contemplate the thought of mixing it up with the hoi polloi as opposed to lounging in the back of a chauffeur driven Merc.(Actually I don't really mind top businessmen travelling in comfort: it's the puffed up senior civil servants that don't deserve it).In London and New York, bankers, tycoons, judges etc operating at a far higher level financially and professionally than their Thai counterparts think nothing of using public transport or even bicycling into work.Anyway this sociological problem can be tackled once there is a credible strategy in place for Bangkok mass transit.

[MrSnrang]

It can't be helped here. There's absolutely no city planning, no way for busses to navigate small sois. People drive because they have to drive to get places.

[marquess]

What they the authorities really need in order to help reduce congestion, is to have a comphrehensive public transport infa structure plan, one that will be carried out regardless who is in power, one that will be carried out for the greater public good. Example extend the BTS around the city, rather than taking nearly 10 years to build one extension. I admit they are trying but, just not hard enough!

Edited May 22, 2007 by Jai Dee
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