Bangkok to announce fate of BRT bus on Monday

[webfact]

City Hall to announce fate of BRT bus on Monday

By  Asaree Thaitrakulpanich, Staff Reporter

 

  

An undated photo of a bus at BRT Ratchapruek. Photo: Matichon

 

BANGKOK — An overwhelming number of people favored keeping Bangkok’s rapid bus transit system in a recent poll publicized by City Hall on Thursday.

 

A month after coming under fire for announcing the imminent demise of the Bus Rapid Transit system, the city was back with the results of a poll showing strong public sentiments for keeping the big buses running through south-central Bangkok.

 

Full story: http://www.khaosodenglish.com/news/transpo/2017/03/03/city-hall-announce-fate-brt-bus-monday/

 

-- © Copyright Khaosod English 2017-03-03

[yellowboat]

It sounds like it is a transport system worthy of greater efforts to try and save it.  Road it once, and it seemed like a model system, but it was around 2pm.   

[bmore99]

How to introduce a price hike for a service without people protesting? Announce to end the service due to its high cost first.

Yes, people are actually offering to have a price increase. Great tactic.

The civil servant who came up with this idea deserves a promotion.

Sent from my SM-A800F using Thaivisa Connect mobile app

[elgordo38]

I can hardly wait till the let the next contract. After this fiasco there should be bidders aplenty. What do they do with these blue elephants scrap em. Big garage sale?

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Well, the bureaucrats and their survey never contacted me. But I told them the same thing when I called the BMA governor's office the other day to register my support for keeping the BRT (not even knowing then that some kind of public poll was being conducted. And no one at BRT or BMA mentioned anything about the poll during my phone conversations with them).

 

As I said in an earlier post in a related thread here, the current 5 baht fare to go anywhere on the BRT line makes it the most affordable public transit option that I'm aware of anywhere in Bangkok (excluding anything that might be free for certain groups). If money was the issue, I concurred in my conversation with the Governor's office, then raising the fare from 5 baht now to a new 10 baht amount would be better than canceling the service.

 

Heck, the fare for the BRT bus line was supposed to be far more than 5 or 10 baht from the very day they launched the service years ago. So if it can be sustained now years later at the 10 baht rate, that's nothing to complain about. The crappy old, non-air conditioned BMTA buses that get stuck in regular traffic have a standard fare these days of 8 baht, AFAIK.

 

Earlier this week, I took a BRT trip midday and was returning to the terminal Sathorn station a bit after noon time, and my BRT bus was very full even at that hour, with nearly full-capacity standing passengers in addition to all the seats occupied.

 

Also, this photo from the Technic Krungthep station looking toward Rama III shows how cross traffic can temporarily obstruct the buses, but it also shows that there isn't any big problem with cars using the reserved bus lane. This wasn't rush hour, of course, but I've been on the line many times at rush hour as well, and never seen cars driving in the reserve bus lane. In the photo below, the BRT bus lane is to the far left, between the orange painted line and green and white striped concrete raised divider curb.

 

Edited March 4, 2017 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[Silurian]

Did they specify which Monday?

 

I haven't seen any new update on the BRT closure.

 

[funandsuninbangkok]

Waiting for the heat to die down. Then they will go for the quit kill