Baht Bus Bottleneck From Jomtien To Pattaya During Peak Hours -- Worse Than Ever!

[RabC]

They should get rid of them all and start a real bus service with a reasonable amount of buses, set routes and 24/7 service. of course this will never happen in pattaya ...

The city had a bus service a few years ago...red line/ green line. The problem was that the buses didn't follow a schedule so one never knew how long they would have to wait ...5 minutes or 50 minutes. (surprise -surprise) I took it once from Jomtien all the way to North Pattaya and it was great -air conditioned!!! But because to not enough customers, the city canceled it. No, they didn't think about what was wrong.

It was cancelled due to the pressure City Hall received from the Baht Bus mafia. The timing of the busses was deliberately interfered with by outside influences to ensure it wasn't a success.

[Tony M]

No it's not related. The problem as I described is that most of the buses were running EMPTY trolling for fat charter fares.

If the buses that go past you full could get back to Jomtien more quickly there would be more seats available, thus easing the shortage. So it is related.

I still have little trouble finding a seat on a bahtbus from Jomtien. Just the other day about 3 completely full buses went past me, and a couple of completely empty ones (which I am not convinced are looking for special fares at all, see below) and then one with just two people in. I hailed it, it stopped, and by the time we got to Pattaya it was about 75% full. Whilst I was getting on it another nearly empty one stopped for some other people about 20 yards away.

So I think this has much to do with where one tries to catch the things.

Why am I not convinced that the empty buses are looking for special fares? Because they go straight past everyone, including those who might be prepared to pay for a special fare. And if they are going back to Pattaya to look for a special fare, why not just fill up with regular fares at 10B each for the trip back? That would give them another 150B for that empty trip. That's what I would do.

Also I would be interested to know where exactly all these empty buses are going to find their special fares?

At certain times of the day ( mornings from around 8.00 am ) they seem to be waiting for our Russian friends to come out of their hotels to head to Bali Hai for the speedboats to Koh Larn. They won't take 10 baht type passengers. In the afternoon, from around 4.00 pm or 4.30 pm they all seem to be heading, empty, back to Bali Hai to wait for the speedboats to come back. They won't stop as they don't want to pick up passengers for the normal routes. They want full, high-fare paying, Russians only.

[BlackPuddingBertha]

At certain times of the day ( mornings from around 8.00 am ) they seem to be waiting for our Russian friends to come out of their hotels to head to Bali Hai for the speedboats to Koh Larn. They won't take 10 baht type passengers. In the afternoon, from around 4.00 pm or 4.30 pm they all seem to be heading, empty, back to Bali Hai to wait for the speedboats to come back.

Fair enough. That's not an area that I go to at all so I would never see them there at those times.

But that doesnt explain where the empty ones are going from Jomtien towards Pattaya between 6 and 8pm. Nor does it explain how they got to Jomtien in the first place (presumably they didnt drive there empty also).