[sustran] Re: Rail or bus

Jonathan E. D. Richmond richmond at alum.mit.edu
Wed May 5 13:20:50 JST 2004


On the specifics of fares, the 10 baht fare will only get you about one
station on Skytrain. Aircon bus rides the length of a more typical 30-40
baht Skytrain ride cost 10 baht, while nonaircon buses are 4 or 5 baht
for any trip length. Longer distance bus rides are frequently
several times the length of a Skytrain trip.

Discounted Skytrain fares are available for regular users but must be used
within a month. This means that irregular users -- for example someone who
might go on a weekend shopping trip -- are discouraged by the highest
fares, and the system is also put out of the reach of low-income groups
who probably wouldn't have the cash to finance a multiride ticket in one
go, quite apart from the fact that "Every baht counts" to them --Jonathan


On Wed, 5 May 2004, Jain Alok wrote:

> Dear Karl,
>
> Taking a few comparisons from your previous mail, and checking BTS website
> for latest ticketing offered, I can summarise the following:
>
> Minimum fare for short-distance travel:
>
> BMTA air-con buses: 8 baht
> Microbuses: 20 baht
> Skytrain: 10 baht
>
> Obviously, microbuses would be more expensive for short-distance whereas
> BMTA a/c buses and Skytrain are comparable.
>
> Fares for Long-distance travel:
>
> BMTA air-con buses: 18 baht
> Microbuses: 20 baht
> Skytrain: 40 baht (although with multiple trip ticket, this could be reduced
> to 18-25 baht)
>
> Yes, skytrain is more expensive than microbuses and BMTA buses when you
> consider published single journey fare but for regular users the fares are
> not that different.
>
> Apart from different ways of looking at figures, I guess we share the same
> view with respect to Bangkok.
>
> Regards
> Alok
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Karl Fjellstrom [mailto:karl at dnet.net.id]
> Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 2004 1:02 PM
> To: 'Asia and the Pacific sustainable transport'
> Subject: [sustran] Re: Rail or bus
>
>
> Dear Alok,
>
> Thanks for the thoughtful note. Appreciate the chance to bounce ideas
> around, just as a way to learn and not to advocate a particular approach.
> Actually there's a lot to reply to, including your observations of Bogota
> (you're right, in many ways it has all the advantages of a metro rail system
> like high capacity, express routes, exclusive ROW, trunk & feeders, but
> without the main disadvantages of cost and construction time), but for now
> I'll just reply on your notes on Bangkok.
>
> I think there is an inaccuracy in your point 3 and 4 below where you
> indicate private sector air con bus services, and informal sector servcies
> (primarily a/c minivans) have a 'price comparable to the skytrain'. If this
> were true, then you may be right in some senses that "There is hardly any
> difference between 3, 4 and skytrain services." But according to my
> information this isn't true and so the argument doesn't hold.....
>
> Firstly: for private a/c services there is a fleet of 800 or so microbuses
> charging a flat 20 baht. But they have very long routes, I don't know
> exactly but probably more than 20 or 30km avg. And people tend to use them
> for long rather than short trips. Sometimes even shorter trips by the
> skytrain would cost double (40 baht). And there are the private a/c buses,
> around 700 in Jan-03 but rapidly growing. These charge from 8 to 18 baht
> depending on distance. Again, average routes are long (around 30km!) but a
> normal fare for a city trip up to 8km is 8 baht. A similar distance on the
> skytrain is at least triple or quadruple this. It's a similar story for the
> BMTA (state operator) air con buses, of which there are around 2000. These
> charge from 12 to 22 baht depending on distance but for the first 8km it's
> 12 baht, well under half the price of a comparable trip on the skytrain.
> (Though in all cases for very short trips of course there is much less price
> difference, as the minimum, 1-station skytrain fare is 10 baht.)
>
> Secondly: for the minivans, it's 10 to 43 baht depending on distance, but
> they tend to have even longer routes, serving outer suburbs. So as well as
> being much cheaper than the skytrain on a per km basis they also enable less
> transfers (hence further savings) than would be required if they were forced
> to use the skytrain for part of the trip.
>
> Just one note to add about the 'financiers' and 'bottomline' which you
> mention. KfW, a major financier of the system, recently wrote off a huge
> chunk of debt owed by the skytrain operator, since the operator cannot pay
> back the loan and is struggling just to make the interest payments.
> Ridership now of 300,000+ in 2004 is great, except perhaps when we consider
> the 1996 projections were for 900,000+ and even the revised projections
> following the economic crash in '97 were 600,000+ *during the first year of
> system opening* (back in late '99), with projections for further rapid
> growth after that.
>
> I'm not against the skytrain and I think it's a wonderful service for an
> important wealthy sector of the market. I think it also helps raise the
> image of transit in Bangkok. And much more should have been done to better
> integrate the formal bus services. (This could have preempted the explosion
> in informal services.) But I am a leery of some of the inflated claims made
> (often by those with a very strongly vested interest) in using public funds
> to further expand the skytrain network - or develop other metro rail lines -
> without even considering alernatives.
>
> Best rgds, Karl
>
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-----

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