Bangkok looks to clear skies with rail project
A city famous for traffic jams is looking to solve its congestion and pollution woes by building a massive train station and overhauling its rail network.
Bangkok, a capital choked by daily gridlock and seasonal toxic haze, is at the center of plans for Thailand’s biggest rail development project that will make travel by train possible to China and Singapore and will connect most major Thai cities to Bangkok and its expanding transit systems.
The Thai government has committed to spending more than $21 billion to expand Bangkok’s rail transit, extend train lines and build high-speed rails — with a massive, $1.3 billion hub at the center that will become Southeast Asia’s largest train station when it opens in 2021.
The plan is part of the government’s move to ease air pollution. Exhaust from gas-guzzling vehicles, as well as power generators, has been blamed for contributing to hazardous haze blanketing Bangkok and parts of the country over the past several months. The government has urged citizens to use more public transportation and has made expanding the transit system a priority.
“It will be good for the country’s economy and environment over the long term,” said Somprawin Manprasert, chief economist at Bank of Ayudhya Pcl. “The pollution problem has shown that we have reached the point where our actions start to hurt us.”
Growth engine
Thailand’s rail ambition serves not only as a tool to reduce fossil fuel use but also to boost the struggling economy, overhaul its dated train system and tame its currency. The rail network is a flagship infrastructure project that’s viewed as a major support for an economy reeling from a severe drought and a slump in tourism as a result of the coronavirus outbreak.
The majority of the $33 billion infrastructure budget over the next three years will be spent on rail projects, with the goal that it will bring more private investment and boost consumption as Thailand seeks to recover from the slowest growth in five years.
“The global economy is quite weak and the interest rates are quite low. This is the best time to invest in infrastructure,” Voravuth Mala, acting governor of the State Railway of Thailand, said in an interview. “If people can travel quickly and conveniently, the economy will be good. That’s the idea we build upon.”
The development will double the state passenger rail’s capacity and triple the freight capacity through track doubling. It’s expected to serve more than 22 million commercial passengers annually after the upgrade, and transport more than 30 million tons of commodities. Highspeed rail will connect key Thai cities to Bangkok, a city of 10 million residents and 20 million visitors where the transit system will also double in number of lines.
Even though Chinese and Japanese rail systems dwarf that of Thailand, such expansion is rare for the country, where the network had been undeveloped for almost seven decades as it turned to highways.
“Investing in the rail system is necessary for economic development,” said Pavida Pananond, an associate professor at Thammasat Business School’s Department of International Business, Logistics and Transport. “But the caveats for Thailand lie in the usual issue of how these projects are implemented, whether it will be a source of vested interests in corruption and siphoning off the budget.”