On 10/20/2023 at 7:19 PM, RabbitFoot said:

Usual western propaganda. Full of resentment.

I've been there. Train is great and is benefiting the country.

Period.

 

From my understanding it cost approximately 6 billion US to build. Given that Laos GDP is just ahead of last place Afghanistan in Asia I would expect any benefit to be spectacular for that type of outlay (10% of GDP). Rather than "Train is great". 

 

 

I remember reading that Thailand halted a deal with China on this rail project many years ago. One of the reasons given being that China insisted on owning the 1 kilometre of land either side of the railway line. This would mean all ancillary businesses to the railway, and all others no doubt on that land, would be Chinese owned and controlled No wonder Thailand backed out of that deal.

On 10/23/2023 at 1:11 PM, billd766 said:

The SRT does not even cover 30% of Thailand and the HST will cover much less than that.

 

In addition to that the SRT Is already 230 Billion baht in debt and perhaps 50 years out of date.

 

Now they want to increase that debt by buying the HST made in China, instead of selling much of the surplus land that it owns and updating the existing system.

 

The SRT has been slowly trying to progress a 20-year track-doubling program for the past decade or more, it's still moving ahead, and might increase the movement of container-traffic to/from Laem Chabang from the North-East, North-West & Southern regions of Thailand  ...  which IMO is probably a good thing economically long-term.  Especially if regional transhipment-centres result in what an elderly Brit like myself might remember as a Freight-Liner system ?

 

Some may not realise that doubling a single-track system would more-than double the carrying-capacity of the routes, by eliminating delays while waiting for oncoming-trains to clear the next single-track section ?

 

Not high-speed (as the Lao railway isn't anyway) but medium-speed, and improving efficiency of an existing asset, at a much-lower/more-affordable cost to Thailand.  Without having to hand land over to a certain regional super-power, either.