[sustran] The Bangkok car free day - area - Sunday

[Carlos F. Pardo]

Dear all,

 

Thank you for your suggestions (on and off list) to the question I asked. As
it seems, there are many opinions regarding this. Nonetheless, one of the
strongest points that was made was the fact that Bangkok’s current transport
situation would make it difficult to implement “full” car-free day, since
accesibility has not yet been solved to a point where anybody who normally
uses a car, motorcycle or tuk tuk can take a bus, BTS or MRTA. Based on this
fact, it would not only be counterproductive to ban motorcyles or tuk tuks,
it would also be so to ban cars! A car-free day in Bangkok would just
produce a highly inaccesible city for most, and an annoying experience
rather than a pleasant one.

 

However, some of you also made suggestions to use other options. For
example, Bangkok has a couple of “car-free areas” which are supposedly
closed for cars, but they are really not very strictly enforced (e.g. Khao
San Road). These streets’ enforcement to become a real car-free area is a
better choice of awareness raising. This project can be developed easily
thanks to the help of a study by Michael King to the GTZ SUTP project and
the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority in 2004.

 

Also, another initiative that was suggested was a car-free Sunday, like the
one that Bogotá has had since 1974 and Quito for two years now. Actually,
few people know that Bangkok did have one of these initiatives along Silom
Road some years ago. Though this development decayed and is currently not
working, the fact that it existed can make it also more probable to
reactivate.

 

Finally, there are alternative initiatives that can complement these
measures. One of them is doing specific activities with children where they
would give their opinion about cars, pollution, Bangkok’s situation, etc.
Their verbatims, drawings and other products would be diffused through media
to show how they react to the existing traffic congestion. Many other
variants and similar activities can be developed easily. 

 

In conclusion, I would like to thank you all for your comments and
arguments. They have proven very useful in deciding wether or not it would
be coherent to develop a car free day this year, or if the previously
described activities would permit a succesful car-free day in the future. 

 

Thanks for your help. More comments and questions are highly welcome.

 

 

Carlos F. Pardo

Project Coordinator

GTZ Sustainable Urban Transport Project (SUTP)

Room 0942, Transport Division, UN-ESCAP

ESCAP UN Building

Rajadamnern Nok Rd.

Bangkok 10200, Thailand

Tel: +66 (0) 2 - 288 2576

Fax: +66 (0) 2 - 280 6042

Mobile: +66 (0) 1 - 772 4727

e-mail:  <mailto:carlos.pardo at sutp.org> carlos.pardo at sutp.org

Website:  <http://www.sutp.org/> www.sutp.org

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