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Doubletrack railway to be in operation mid 2011

By Watcharapong Thongrung

The Nation

The Transport Ministry expects the ChachoengsaoLaem Chabang doubletrack railway to begin operation in the middle of next year.

The ministry's acting permanent secretary, Sorasak Sansombat, said yesterday that the State Railway of Thailand had completed about 6070 per cent of the construction work on the 78kilometre track.

Sorasak was speaking at the second public hearing on a study of development of the transport and traffic system.

A ministry source said that in fact, the rail project was sched¬uled to be finished by March. Construction had been somewhat slow because of insufficient workers and some problems related to work on the tracks.

The 201120 transport and traffic plan is aimed at turning Thailand into the Asean transport hub to increase the country's economic role in the region, improving transport infrastructure and safety, promoting efficiency and cost savings, and ensuring equal access to the transport system by the public.

The plan requires investment of more than Bt250 billion, of which Bt140 billion will be spent in the first five years and the rest in the following five years.

The plan is expected to increase the proportion of rail trans¬port to 4.5 per cent from the present 2.2 per cent and waterwaybased transport to 15 per cent from the present 14 per cent. It is also expected to boost the speed of trains to 90 kilometres per hour from the present 47kph and that of the cargo trains to 65kph from 35kph.

The plan is also aimed at reducing the mortality rate in the transport and traffic systems to 5,500 per year from the current 11,000.

-- The Nation 2010-10-07

[asiawatcher]

" ... State Railway of Thailand had completed about 6070 per cent of the construction work "

" ... The 201120 transport and traffic plan"

"... reducing the mortality rate in the transport and traffic systems to 5,500 per year from the current 11,000."

Has anyone got a translation for this? I'm confused!

[Ricardo]

I recently caught the slow-train from Pattaya to Hualampong, and was interested to see the progress on this project, they seem to be building stations every several miles along the doubled-track, as far as Chachoengsao, so presumably some sort of local passenger service is planned, in addition to expanding capacity for container-trains from the port ?