Bangkok Traffic: New automatic system launched to ease city congestion

[webfact]

 

As a strategic initiative aimed at improving vehicle movement, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) recently initiated an automatic traffic-management system. This pilot project focuses on optimising Bangkok traffic across four significant roads within the city.

 

Over the commencement of this project, Chadchart Sittipunt, the Governor of Bangkok, divulged that the modern system is duly installed at 13 intersections on key city routes, counting Rama VI Road, Ratchawithi Road, Phahon Yothin Road, and Praditpat Road. He mentioned the challenge of deploying close to a thousand officers across the city to handle Bangkok traffic lights, half of whom are traffic light controllers. Due to inadequate information-sharing measures between units, efficiency is often undermined.

 

Providing a solution to this encumbrance, the newly installed Bangkok Area Traffic Control Project (BATCP) promises to rectify such inefficiencies. BATCP is programmed to collate valuable data including vehicle density, waiting periods at traffic intersections, and locations experiencing extended tailbacks. These elements of data will then be utilised to manage Bangkok traffic effectively and inhibit the exacerbation of jams. Additionally, the new system is pegged to provide relief to the existing workforce of traffic officers.

 

By Mitch Connor

Photo Courtesy of tastythailand.com

 

Full story: https://thethaiger.com/news/national/bangkok-launches-automatic-traffic-system-to-ease-city-congestion

 

-- © Copyright Thaiger 2023-06-27

 

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[stoner]

11 minutes ago, webfact said:

These elements of data will then be utilised to manage Bangkok traffic effectively and inhibit the exacerbation of jams.

ok. 

[ezzra]

Too many cars on too little roads rouge attitude of Thai drivers and riders, badly synchronized traffic lights systems, very little traffic police presence if at all, can't see how the newly installed Bangkok Area Traffic Control Project (BATCP) can make sense of the road's mayhem that is everywhere in Thailand.

[sikishrory]

Ah so in other words starting to use the traffic lights correctly the way they're supposed to be used

[BritScot]

Back in about 2003 I met a British lad who was working for Thai traffic control who told me that they had an upto date computerised predictive traffic control system and the police cut the cables reasonbeing: 1. They new better than the computer and 2. Scared it would cost them their jobs. 

[Retfed50]

43 minutes ago, sikishrory said:

Ah so in other words starting to use the traffic lights correctly the way they're supposed to be used

Yes. But until the drivers use the traffic lights the way they are intended, nothing is going to change!

[richard_smith237]

56 minutes ago, sikishrory said:

Ah so in other words starting to use the traffic lights correctly the way they're supposed to be used

Indeed....    When sat at the lights for 10mins... then when the lights turn green they do so allowing 100's of cars through up to the point the junction is then 'gridlocked' so the cars in the other directions have to sit there for 10mins... 

 

When the traffic lights are manually controlled there is a clear 'culture' that seems opposite to conventional traffic wisdom of 'frequent' light changes rather than slow changing causing everyone to panic and go through on amber (and even red up to 5 seconds or more after lights have changed) causing the gridlock. 

 

A city wide auto-mated system is something Bangkok has been crying out for for decades. 

 

 

19 minutes ago, BritScot said:

Back in about 2003 I met a British lad who was working for Thai traffic control who told me that they had an upto date computerised predictive traffic control system and the police cut the cables reasonbeing: 1. They new better than the computer and 2. Scared it would cost them their jobs. 

I too heard exactly the same rumour but in the late '90's.....  Whether true or not is unknown, but certainly not un-imaginable. 

Edited June 27, 2023 by richard_smith237

[thailand49]

About goddamned time!

This country is 60years behind time allowing police to control traffic taught to them by dead old men passed on by other old men.  The traffic problem issue to the police themselves let the computer for the word now the only thing don't set the traffic light for five minutes then objective is to keep things moving so drivers are making progress not sitting at lights when no card are coming or police giving preference to bigger roads so cars can speed down them knowing they got the green.

[Wiggy]

When I see BATCP, I can’t help seeing batcrap. 

[Wiggy]

12 hours ago, webfact said:

counting Rama VI Road, Ratchawithi Road, Phahon Yothin Road, and Praditpat Road

Yes, Sukhumvit, Petchaburi etc. are quiet these days ????

[Dr B]

6 hours ago, richard_smith237 said:

Indeed....    When sat at the lights for 10mins... then when the lights turn green they do so allowing 100's of cars through up to the point the junction is then 'gridlocked' so the cars in the other directions have to sit there for 10mins... 

 

When the traffic lights are manually controlled there is a clear 'culture' that seems opposite to conventional traffic wisdom of 'frequent' light changes rather than slow changing causing everyone to panic and go through on amber (and even red up to 5 seconds or more after lights have changed) causing the gridlock. 

 

A city wide auto-mated system is something Bangkok has been crying out for for decades. 

 

 

I too heard exactly the same rumour but in the late '90's.....  Whether true or not is unknown, but certainly not un-imaginable. 

It is absolutely true. It was a British system called SCOOT. There were multiple sensors in the road surfaces, so that the system could measure traffic flows and also know how long queues were. The problem is that roads are complex networks, and optimising the flow through a complex network is way beyond the human brain. The system at the time, and presumably still now though I have not lived in Bangkok since 2006, was that policemen sat in small air conditioned huts at each intersection and spoke on radios to their colleagues on adjacent intersections. The idea of having to move out of their air conditioned boxes and actually do some traffic policing was just too much, so they cut the cables. Millions of baht wasted.

[rudi49jr]

What I remember from Bangkok is that in rush hour the cops would switch off the automatic system of traffic light and start doing it manually. Which of course led to total gridlock. I hope this new system can not be switched off the cops so can do it manually because they think they can do it better. 

[varun]

Make it Somchai monkey-proof,

so that it cannot be overridden to a manual setting during peak traffic hours.

 

Otherwise, just another castle in the sky.

[Crossy]

On 6/27/2023 at 2:11 PM, richard_smith237 said:

I too heard exactly the same rumour but in the late '90's.....  Whether true or not is unknown, but certainly not un-imaginable. 

 

I believe it was Peek Traffic who did the system in the 90s, and it was indeed "disabled" by "someone" before it had even had chance to learn the patterns.

 

1995

https://techmonitor.ai/technology/peeks_11m_traffic_systems_order_is_second_in_bangkok

 

and