BMTA offers week, month tickets to help cut commuters’ expenses

BANGKOK, 1 March 2011 (NNT) – The Bangkok Mass Transit Authority (BMTA) has started selling week and month tickets aimed to help reduce each commuter’s travel expense by 400 THB per month.

BMTA Director Opas Phetmunee stated that the week and month tickets had been introduced as an alternative for people who frequently use public bus services to save on their commuting costs. With unlimited trips, the weekly and monthly tickets are priced at 100 THB and 400 THB, respectively, for regular buses and 200 THB and 800 THB for air-conditioned buses.

Mr Opas expected approximately 10 percent of public bus riders, or about 100,000 people, to avail themselves of the new passes each month while the amount of money to be saved could be as high as 400 THB per month per person. They can be purchased at all BMTA offices from today onwards.

-- NNT 2011-03-01

This is good news. Positive step in the right direction. Put this article on the list of good, positive news items in Thailand. Who would be able to criticise this?

Looking forward to a combined card for BTS, MRT and BMTA which can be refilled. That would be perfect.

Who would be able to criticise this?

I'm sure someone will find something to whine about

It's about time really. Plenty of people commute to work and soon even more will with the rail extensions. This will mean much shorter queues at the station at busy times.

Next step has to be a combined ticket.

In 2002/3 you used to be able to buy paper BMTA weekly and monthly tickets but they were abandoned after counterfeit tickets started turning up in large numbers (no surprises there). I think I still have a couple of monthly tickets somewhere. It will be interesting to see what security measures these tickets have.

Don't hold your breath on a fully intergrated ticketing platfrom (BTS, MRT, SRT, BRT, BMTA buses and ferries). It is planned and promised but it is still years away. The BTSC & BMCL have promised for the last 4 years that an intergrated ticket will be introduced but still some time away as both seem to believe it will affect their profits.

BTSC is about to introduce intergrated ticketing on the BRT and BTS.

However, the SRT and BMCL have stated that an intergrated ticketing platform will soon be available on the ARL and Subway which will be useful for some.

The corrupt leasing proposal of 4000 buses proposed by the BJT for 2 billion dollars is meant to also include electronic ticketing which will be the precursor to an intergrated ticket.