Pattaya execs consulted on rail project

The State Railway of Thailand (SRT) and a CP-led consortium contracted to build a 224-billion-baht high-speed railway linking three airports yesterday met Pattaya City executives to gather input ahead of the final study into the project’s route and design.

The highlights of the discussion were a land-lease contract between the Pattaya City and the SRT along the 16km stretch of the existing railway, Pattaya City’s monorail project, and the transitoriented development (TOD) near the high-speed rail scheme.

The high-speed railway will be built by the Eastern High-Speed Rail Linking Three Airports Co Ltd, a consortium of CP Group, Ch Karnchang Plc, Bangkok Expressway and Metro Plc, Italian-Thai Development Plc (ITD) and China Railway Construction Corp.

Porncharoen Thananat, the company’s representative, said the meeting was held to inform Pattaya City officials of the initial project design and to collect the local authority’s opinions about the impact of the project.

He said as negative impacts on the community would be unavoidable during the construction, the company would have to make sure that the final draft of the project design was able to address their concerns.

The final draft is likely to be completed in October, he added.

Mr Porncharoen also welcomed Pattaya’s plan to build a monorail to link with the high-speed rail system and to acquire a 140-rai plot of land for a transit-oriented development (TOD) project integrating public transport, especially train systems, into town planning to promote better land use and development.

The CP-led consortium signed the contract to build the Don Mueang– Suvarnabhumi–U-Tapao high-speed rail route last October, almost a year after it submitted the lowest bid of 117.2 billion baht and won the contract in 2018.

It is one of the five infrastructure megaprojects serving the government’s flagship Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) initiative to attract investments.