BTS fare rise puts onus on BMA to help

Living in Bangkok is getting more and more unaffordable for average income earners. If you happen to be fortunate to live in the city centre, you will find yourself struggling with rising food costs as street food is being wiped out. But if you are fortunate to live in a more affordable area in suburban Bangkok, then you are likely to be faced with ridiculously expensive travelling costs.

This month the fares for extension sections for both ends of the BTS, Bang Wa and Bearing, have increased from 10 baht to 15 baht.

That means the highest fare for the BTS lines goes up to 57 baht from the already-expensive 52 baht. The fare breaks into 42 baht for the original BTS line operated by BTS skytrain, with 10 baht (increasing to 15 baht) for the two extended sections (On Nut-Bearing stations and Saphan Taksin-Bang Wa stations) operated by City Hall.

The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) said the increase to fares, which had been kept low under former governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra’s populist policy, was needed to cover the operating costs of the BTS extended sections it has shouldered.

As city commuters, we can only swallow our complaints and quietly accept the increase, which makes a BTS trip, already expensive, even more unaffordable.

If you are lucky to live and work or study along the BTS line (also MRT line), then your travel expenses will be just below 2,500 baht a month. But many people I know are living outside the city centre and they are spending at least 200 baht a day on travelling, not to mention the hours they spent on the road.

To make the unaffordable fare situation worse, the BMA late last month was toying with increasing the radius of the special zone around BTS stations from 500 metres to 1,000 metres, to boost the economy and increase the potential of surrounding plots to become residential blocks for city commuters.

The privilege will allow developers to increase the height and the floor area ratio (FAR) if a high-rise is built within the designated radius from the rail stations. That means the plots of land next to the rail stations will be even more expensive.

But will commuters really benefit from such a privilege if the radius is doubled? Will average commuters, with an income that barely covers their high cost of living, be able to afford a room in a newly built condominium within the 500-metre or the possibly new 1,000-metre radius?

Instead of expanding the radius of the privilege zone to boost business, the BMA should think of how to keep fares — for the BTS, which can be controlled by City Hall itself — affordable if City Hall cares how its residents are coping with the cost of living.

At least the Mass Rapid Transit Authority of Thailand (MRTA) has put some effort into this area and deserves some credit. The agency operates the extension sections of the MRT — the Purple Line, and a few more to come. It earlier gave a concession for the BEM to operate and earn every baht from the original MRT line.

When the MRTA was going to launch its Purple Line, the agency was seeking a way to make the fares lower by using an expropriated plot next to Bang Phai MRT station to build a high-rise. It hoped the income earned from the development could subsidise fares and make them more affordable for commuters.

The business model — for a public transport operator to rent out properties, to earn more revenue from channels other than ticket fares, to keep public transport affordable — has been practised by many countries.

Japan is one of the most successful cases where commuters pay low fares, relative to their high cost of living, because the annexes of its stations have been leased out as shopping malls and restaurants.

But thanks to our MRTA’s outdated 1987 Expropriation Act, which does not allow the agency to use its land to make a profit from business other than train operations, the plot — the one that was likely to bring higher revenue to the MRTA and hep subsidise ticket fares — had to be turned into a park-and-go building instead.

Although it wasn’t the best solution to offer a more affordable ticket fare, at least parking has been provided next to Bang Phai station.

Meanwhile, the MRTA is working out how to change the act so the agency can make use of its potential plots of land commercially, to help keep down fares.

Maybe it’s time for the BMA to start thinking how to make the BTS ticket fare more affordable too, not how to add value to surrounding areas for land developers.