Other Perspectives

On Friday 29th May, 2009 the Bangkok Post produced a Property Focus supplement. One of the items featured was an overview of the Mass Transit System compared with that of other major cities, as well as a listing of planned lines and lines under study.

Typically, it was just a listing of data with little analysis. The data presented, which I have not verified, was;

Table 1. Raw Data

A nice assortment of data, much of which is not truly relevant to assessing how adequate a Mass Transit System is.

I’m no expert on Mass Transit Systems, but you do not need to be one to exercise simple logic and assess and compare Mass Transit Systems. As I am not an expert, I cannot provide you with the typical buzzwords, only simple English.

Line Density

A good Mass Transit System has to be easily and conveniently accessible to the people in order for it to be useful.

One of the main criteria I use in assessing the adequacy of a Mass Transit System is density of lines, or in simple terms, how many square kilometers of city area are served by a kilometer of line. This metric will give an indication of relative distance the population has to travel to get to the system, and penetration or coverage of the system.

In the case of Bangkok, even before looking at the number, anyone familiar with the system here will know that it is hopelessly inadequate. Vast swathes of the city are nowhere near a Mass Transit line.

Forget the suburbs; yesterday I was in the Pratunam area of New Petchburi road where the traffic is a nightmare any day of the week. Looking around at the condominium and apartment complexes, I wondered why people would choose to live there. Crowded, polluted, grubby looking, traffic snarls as soon as you step out onto the road and a long sticky walk in Bangkok’s heat and humidity to get to the nearest Mass Transit station.

But the metric is telling as you can see below;

Table 2. Square kilometers per kilometer of line.  

Bangkok ranks bottom of the list, with 35.66 square kilometers per kilometer of line. Of the 14 cities featured, the top 7 have less than 5 square kilometers to each kilometer of line, with Seoul best at 2.11 square kilometers for each kilometer of line.

Population Size and Density

Population Size itself is not a critical factor in assessing how useful an existing system is, though it obviously points to the need for one.

Population density expressed in people per square kilometer is only truly useful if evaluated in the context of carrying capacity provided by the service, rather like seat-miles in air travel (how many seats for how many miles). The greater the population density, the greater the carrying capacity required.

That data was not provided, so I will simply note that capacity-kilometers is easily increased by adding more carriages to trains and running trains at a higher frequency. For example, the BTS in Bangkok can easily be run with 5 carriages per train as designed, rather than the current 3, and service could just as easily be run at a frequency of 2½ minutes, rather than the 5 that is typical currently. This simple move would increase carrying capacity to 330%.

Nevertheless, if we look at the number in relation to population density and average number of people served by each station, it provides more insight in comparing the systems.

Table 3. Population Density

The table is sorted in descending order of population density. If 2 cities have equal penetration of mass transit lines, expressed in square kilometers per kilometer of line, the city with the higher population density would have more people to serve at each station and with each kilometer of line.

Interestingly, Seoul with the highest population density only caters to 39,173 people per station, Manila with the third highest population density caters to 351,190 per station and Singapore which is 4th in density 62,500 per station. Bangkok, which lies 11th in population density has the 2nd highest number of people per station at 158,537.

What Needs to Be Done?

The simple answer is to provide more lines and better coverage so that the populace is truly served by the Mass Transit System.

The same article highlighted that a total of 186.9 kilometers of additional lines are either planned or being studied. If completed, that would take Bangkok to 6.80 square kilometers per kilometer of line, 10th in the table on current numbers.

The article is also long on excuses for the late provision of services. The Mass Transit Master Plan was conceived in 1994, and todate we are well behind anything in that plan, a third version of which goes before the cabinet in July 2009. The plan has a completion date of 2028.

In comparison, in 1967 Singapore city planners identified a need for a Mass Transit System to be in place by 1992. Work began in October 1983 and the first section of the MRT started operation in November 1987, with an official launch in March 1988.

What really needs to be done then is to put a world class political leadership in place. Everything else follows from there.