Road plan is off the rails
In its push to build a new expressway in parallel with the planned Brown Line monorail route in Bangkok, the government does not seem to have come up with a good business case beyond the need to make use of 281 abandoned pillars on the Kaset-Nawamin road — ghosts from the 1990s. That is not a compelling enough reason.
The plan instead demonstrates the government’s misguided obsession with building more motorways and expressways which is contrary to its own goal to shift Thailand’s main transport modes from road and air links to trains.
The Brown Line that will connect the Khae Rai area in Nonthaburi with the Lam Sali area in the southeast of the city is one of many electric rail networks planned or under construction. This is a good infrastructure development plan. Once all the new electric train lines are up and running, they will help facilitate travel for Bangkok commuters, many of whom will shift from car use to this reliable and convenient mode of public transport.
But the plan to spend 25 billion baht to build an expressway right above the Brown Line track is misplaced and unsound. On the business side, the project will unlikely become a white elephant since car users will flock to alternative routes to avoid jams.
Traffic congestion has been an unresolved Bangkok woe for decades. The capital has been carved up to make way for many expressways. Yet these highways haven’t helped reduce traffic but attracted more cars into the city. The current high levels of air pollution in the city caused by pollutants emitted from cars remind us how unhealthy the capital is.
Apart from the need to revive the ghost pillars, this new expressway, like its predecessors, will not help ease traffic congestion.
The Office of Transport and Traffic Policy and Planning (OTP), which is tasked by the government to study the project, recently told Prachachat newspaper that the new expressway will help absorb half of around 150,000 cars clogging the Kaset-Nawamin road each day. But we all know they will end up getting stuck in traffic on the expressway. Meanwhile, Kaset-Nawamin road itself will not be half-emptied but clogged by cars as usual.
The OTP’s vision behind this infrastructure is to bring about the mobility of both car users and rail commuters who take the same route via different modes of transport. It demonstrates the government is getting confused over its goal to make the country reliant more on rail and less on road transport.
This plan is unnecessary. The new expressway will not only duplicate a 7.5-km part of the the Brown Line, but also run in parallel with part of the Don Muang tollway.
The government’s obsession with building more roads is also evident in its infrastructure plans for other parts of Thailand. Recently, an elevated inter-city motorway, which links Ayutthaya’s Bang Pa-in district to Nakhon Ratchasima, was said to be “making progress”. But the motorway will run in parallel with the planned highspeed train, duplicating the rail line linking Bangkok with the Northeast.
Reduction of personal car use and promotion of rail services should be the government’s first priority in its infrastructure development. This vision is vital for a city with bad traffic and worsening air pollution like Bangkok.
On the bright side, the OTP on Thursday revealed a good, viable plan to build light-rail transit and tram systems in key cities — Chiang Mai, Phuket, Nakhon Ratchasima, Khon Kaen and Pitsanulok. This is the right direction. But the military government seems to be losing track with its push for the new expressway in the capital.
The OTP should remind the government that Bangkok already has too many tollways and everyone knows that traffic remains bad and air pollution is worsening.
The city doesn’t need more expressways that will attract more cars.