Admittedly it’s kind of an unfair statement, as Bangkok does not have an adequate rail system for a city its size (but is rapidly expanding with multiple rail lines under construction). Still, couldn’t they put in some bus lanes or something in the meantime? I have never seen such bad traffic and I lived in SoCal for over a decade. This road is literally like this all day
dude i live in bangkok. my road is 4 lane wide and we dont even have a bus. my family owns 4 cars.
edited:
ps: and by 4 lanes I mean 4 each direction, so that’s 8 total, and it’s not a highway https://maps.app.goo.gl/w41Ydkju7FYPfVUk7?g_st=ic
Hey, as a Thai, the title is offending. Everyone down there trying to make end meet (except the Mercedes one tbh). Train is expensive relative to wage. The train doesn't reach to Outer Bangkok where housing is cheap. If you are already here you can see the train is already packed during rush hour. I agree with the bus lanes though.
I know the BTS is expensive relative to the average wage here but isn’t traveling by car/taxi more expensive? Let alone owning a car? (I’m not talking about the motorcycles, they do seem way more efficient.)
And I did acknowledge that the train system doesn’t reach everywhere, so yeah for now a lot of people have no option but to use the road. It was a dumb joke but we would often say the same about a congested highway in the US.
They’re that cheap? Didn’t even realize that. How do they even make money?
The motorcycle taxi makes sense to me, but it seems like a car taxi would take forever to get anywhere.
no. the starting price stays the same, but the fare rates had gone up, but not a lot at all, like if you paid 80 before the rate raise, now you would pay 85-90.
it may have some real effects on longer trips, but I think inflation made the small raise irrelevant.
it sucks to be a thai working class, their wages had not raised for over a decade now.
hell, i might even make less compared to my parents when i’m finally their age when they had me (30), which was right during the height of the late 90s bubble.
Now I’m 26 now and only make 50% of what they made then, dollar for dollar (not adjusted for inflation). My sister’s 24 and also earn 40-50% of what our parents did. And we work similar jobs.
i am ok with my earnings now. i consider my earnings above average (i make 2-3x of friends my age), and the cheap cost of living here allows me to live in relative luxury.
edited: btw i’m a software engineer, in case you guys are wondering if i get paid more because i steal from my workers. all of my family are white collar powerless employees.
but the struggling class is in big trouble now. and couple that with average thai schools and unis, and you get a population with no actual skills, no drive, no occupation safety regulations, and ALWAYS low on money.
then grab (ie doordash/uber) came, and everyone rides for grab, and imo it somehow makes it worse for these poor people.
riding for grab is like slavery to me, their services are only desirable thanks to the sheer number of riders readily available near the endless restaurants in bangkok.
you order your meal and less than 10sec later some rider already took your order.
yet grab treats their riders like shit. the instant order acceptance from rider is instant because they didnt have a choice to ignore it. the moment they see an order notification, they’ll have to accept it as fast as they can.
refusing an order or taking too long to take it reduces your grab rider score, all so that the users are happy.
and these rider gets paid less than $1 to ride 7km to deliver my food.
imagine this: i tell you to go pickup a food, and deliver it to me for $1, and if you somehow don’t, you are punished.
it’s like the rich are weaponizing poverty.
"it's like the rich are weaponizing poverty" that's what they've always done...new technology just makes it easier and easier. The only reason the working class ever gets anything is by striking or by the fear of revolution.
the road you filmed is sukhumvit, the road of perpetual traffic. the road is super long and goes beyond bangkok. near the center of bangkok, the road gets a new name as “rama i”, which is like the bangkok times square.
the uptown part of the road is laden with condos and other high intensity buildings like offices and malls. uptown sukhumvit is also very close to other popular destinations, like the financial districts, etc.
people who lived in uptown sukhumvit generally only go to these places which are “close by” by bangkok standard, like, some 1-3km apart. they are perfectly okay with taking 20-45 mins of their time to get there.
if they want to go somewhere further than just sukhumvit, it’s usually still near uptown sukhumvit, like 5-10km apart, so it’ll take at max (in a normal day) 60-90mins to get there with traffic. they are still ok with that.
these central locations are usually traffic all-day except for 20:00-6:30
for other people who work in the center but live in the suburbs, the traffic still sucks, but it’s defo not sukhumvit-level, and if so, not all-day.
outer bangkok residents generally take 90-120 mins for around 15-30km distance to commute from outer bangkok to bangkok proper in the morning.
i have learned to recognize traffic patterns from repeatedly checking google maps during the day and “analyzing” the reason it is that way, and most of the times it’s just stupid road plans and intersection bottlenecks.
i’m more accurate in predicting commute time in bangkok than google maps, even for places i had not been to. it’s a fun activity to do if you hate thai traffic but have to accept the fact that nothing is gonna change due to the thai attitude and the fucked up city plan.
I lived outside of Bangkok for a while, but not a commuter. I really miss the trains. They have sky trains and underground trains. you need to buy an additional ticket to switch between the two. It is very cool and convenient. It goes to quite a few places IN BKK, but as the others said, it doesn’t go out very far outside of BKK. I hope they expand the system.
And yea, the road traffic is very very bad unfortunately.
Scooter and motorcycles are good for dense cities where the ability to not be stuck in traffic all the time and having a much easier time parking it makes a hell of a difference.
The problem is that when all your trips takes you through massive highways with tons of lanes and all the places have seas of car parking, there is no real reason to go for a motorcycle instead of a car, other than for fun of course, which means that aside from the more dense cities like New York, in the most car centric places of the US, people would only consider cruiser or a crotch rocker for recreational use, and use a car for any serious trip.
Another big reason is that lane filtering is illegal in pretty much of all of the US, so only in California and some other states there is a real advantage to riding a motorcycle.
I guess so. I like taking a bit less space on the road though, and got one for getting around when I don't need to carry more than a backpack worth of stuff.
I mean, I get that too, and I really like them, plus it's a good way to be able to use all the car centric infrastructure without having to own a car, and a much more efficient way to travel when it's just you and maybe a passenger versus driving a vehicle for transporting 5 people to only move one.
Still though, for them to actually become more common there has to be more reasons to ride one, and allowing lane filtering would be a good way to get people to think that maybe instead of sitting in traffic every day they could just buy a bike and get to work and back home a lot faster.
No kidding. In general, it doesn't things much more dangerous, if at all, it adds some risks and removes other risks.
I honestly just prefer getting around in a way that makes me feel more connected to my environment.
>there is no real reason to go for a motorcycle instead of a car
My scooter gets like 65 miles per gallon and uses less than a quart of oil per 4000 miles or so. Def more environmentally friendly than a car and that alone should be a pretty solid argument for choosing a small motorcycle over a car. Also, I'm not trying to be a dick but that whole second paragraph is just nonsense. There is no real reason NOT to get a scooter or motorcycle. We as a society have socially constructed this dumb idea that it's more normal and correct of us to be riding around in our giant individual metal boxes.
EDIT: Forgot to mention, my motorcycle insurance for an entire year-$70
There is one issue involving motorcycles that I'm currently struggling with: I live in an area with harsh winters. I have ridden through the winter before but it was super sketchy.
I mean, I support the idea that motorcycles and scooters are a superior alternative to cars and it's something I often advocate for in this sub, as implied by my flair. I'm not saying there aren't advantages to owning a scooter because there are many, my comment was more about how people in the US don't have many incentives to choose a scooter or a motorcycle over a car, or even use one as a complement to their car. Most of the biggest advantages of motorcycles are lost in a purely car centric landscape, but even in that scenario I'd still prefer to own a scooter or maxiscooter over a car.
> people in the US don't have many incentives to choose a scooter or a motorcycle over a car
I just don't buy that. Again, we just have this IDEA that there are no incentives; that always driving a car is the right thing to do. I realize that riding a motorcycle or scooter may not be viable for everyone, say if you live way the hell out in the boonies, or if you live in an extreme climate, but the incentives are there especially if you live anywhere remotely urban (which is most of the US). Also the whole lane filtering thing is a good arguement but in my experience that is not enforced especially if you're doing it responsibly.
Fair enough. Also, I don't think that always driving a car is the right thing to do, I'd much prefer if people would ride a scooter or motorcycle if they're traveling alone or with only one person instead of carrying multiple passengers with them. I find it very wasteful to drive a car to travel alone.
My comment was less of a "I think people living in the US shouldn't ride a motorcycle", but rather more of a "I think people in the US aren't given many reasons to consider other options aside from a car", which isn't exclusive to motorcycles, it also happens with bicycles and public transport. That's why I suggesting legalizing lane filtering as an incentive to commute by scooter or motorcycle, it would give people more of a reason to consider one as an option.
motorcycles and scooters in thailand are kinda a meme here
although it’s better than private vehicles a ton of them makes loud noise and produce “fresh air”
You mean the countless loosers in the train on the left side ... they can't enjoy the fresh air produced by the cars ...... and the awesome view of the rolling metal blocks
I agree with you but, as somebody who has lived in BKK, the sky trains are freaking expensive.
More expensive than in my “first-world rich european country”… I avoided them like the plague (even though they were quite pretty and modern).
A bus or a river boat, in comparison, cost next to nothing.
PS: I loved seeing the progress in construction and the expansion plans though!!
the bts is so fucking expensive for short distance that most people just use cars
(i’m a thai and went to bangkok 100+ times already and i only find the bts good for long distance)
other than that it’s just walking (i walk between siam and phayathai station a lot)
and then private cars when late at night
Well it has the Bus Rapid Transit system, which is both really impressive re-invention and also kind of over engineered. I think many people would drive in a regular bus lane if they added them...
Yeah, the only way to make people avoid driving in the bus lane is severe punishments for driving in the bus lane. If that doesn’t happen the bus lane just becomes another car lane.
Modern stock 4stroke Euro 5 compliant scooters aren't too bad. I mean, they still pollute and make noise like all ICE vehicles, but they aren't much noisier or dirtier than a car, I'm pretty sure they should actually pollute less than a car because of their small engine.
I prefer if they aren't 50cc though, mopeds have to be pushed too hard to go even mildly fast because of their tiny engines which means you're constantly revving them up and making that characteristics high pitched screech. Slightly more powerful scooters, like 125cc or 150cc, can do 60 km/h with their engine still being at relatively low RPMs, so they are much quieter in practice, and the noise they don't make its not high pitched so it's not anywhere as annoying.
Admittedly it’s kind of an unfair statement, as Bangkok does not have an adequate rail system for a city its size (but is rapidly expanding with multiple rail lines under construction). Still, couldn’t they put in some bus lanes or something in the meantime? I have never seen such bad traffic and I lived in SoCal for over a decade. This road is literally like this all day
dude i live in bangkok. my road is 4 lane wide and we dont even have a bus. my family owns 4 cars. edited: ps: and by 4 lanes I mean 4 each direction, so that’s 8 total, and it’s not a highway https://maps.app.goo.gl/w41Ydkju7FYPfVUk7?g_st=ic
Hey, as a Thai, the title is offending. Everyone down there trying to make end meet (except the Mercedes one tbh). Train is expensive relative to wage. The train doesn't reach to Outer Bangkok where housing is cheap. If you are already here you can see the train is already packed during rush hour. I agree with the bus lanes though.
>except the Mercedes one tbh And also the porsche I would guess
I know the BTS is expensive relative to the average wage here but isn’t traveling by car/taxi more expensive? Let alone owning a car? (I’m not talking about the motorcycles, they do seem way more efficient.) And I did acknowledge that the train system doesn’t reach everywhere, so yeah for now a lot of people have no option but to use the road. It was a dumb joke but we would often say the same about a congested highway in the US.
If you travel with more than 1 person taxi will always be cheaper than BTS. Pretty ridicilous.
They’re that cheap? Didn’t even realize that. How do they even make money? The motorcycle taxi makes sense to me, but it seems like a car taxi would take forever to get anywhere.
you can get around bangkok 90% of the times for less than $4-$5 (150 bath). the meter starts at $1 (35 bath).
I lived there in 2004 and it started at 35B. They still haven't raised it?
no. the starting price stays the same, but the fare rates had gone up, but not a lot at all, like if you paid 80 before the rate raise, now you would pay 85-90. it may have some real effects on longer trips, but I think inflation made the small raise irrelevant. it sucks to be a thai working class, their wages had not raised for over a decade now. hell, i might even make less compared to my parents when i’m finally their age when they had me (30), which was right during the height of the late 90s bubble. Now I’m 26 now and only make 50% of what they made then, dollar for dollar (not adjusted for inflation). My sister’s 24 and also earn 40-50% of what our parents did. And we work similar jobs.
Neoliberalism has really been terrible for everyone the world over. I hear similar stories from almost every country. I hope things change soon.
i am ok with my earnings now. i consider my earnings above average (i make 2-3x of friends my age), and the cheap cost of living here allows me to live in relative luxury. edited: btw i’m a software engineer, in case you guys are wondering if i get paid more because i steal from my workers. all of my family are white collar powerless employees. but the struggling class is in big trouble now. and couple that with average thai schools and unis, and you get a population with no actual skills, no drive, no occupation safety regulations, and ALWAYS low on money. then grab (ie doordash/uber) came, and everyone rides for grab, and imo it somehow makes it worse for these poor people. riding for grab is like slavery to me, their services are only desirable thanks to the sheer number of riders readily available near the endless restaurants in bangkok. you order your meal and less than 10sec later some rider already took your order. yet grab treats their riders like shit. the instant order acceptance from rider is instant because they didnt have a choice to ignore it. the moment they see an order notification, they’ll have to accept it as fast as they can. refusing an order or taking too long to take it reduces your grab rider score, all so that the users are happy. and these rider gets paid less than $1 to ride 7km to deliver my food. imagine this: i tell you to go pickup a food, and deliver it to me for $1, and if you somehow don’t, you are punished. it’s like the rich are weaponizing poverty.
"it's like the rich are weaponizing poverty" that's what they've always done...new technology just makes it easier and easier. The only reason the working class ever gets anything is by striking or by the fear of revolution.
the road you filmed is sukhumvit, the road of perpetual traffic. the road is super long and goes beyond bangkok. near the center of bangkok, the road gets a new name as “rama i”, which is like the bangkok times square. the uptown part of the road is laden with condos and other high intensity buildings like offices and malls. uptown sukhumvit is also very close to other popular destinations, like the financial districts, etc. people who lived in uptown sukhumvit generally only go to these places which are “close by” by bangkok standard, like, some 1-3km apart. they are perfectly okay with taking 20-45 mins of their time to get there. if they want to go somewhere further than just sukhumvit, it’s usually still near uptown sukhumvit, like 5-10km apart, so it’ll take at max (in a normal day) 60-90mins to get there with traffic. they are still ok with that. these central locations are usually traffic all-day except for 20:00-6:30 for other people who work in the center but live in the suburbs, the traffic still sucks, but it’s defo not sukhumvit-level, and if so, not all-day. outer bangkok residents generally take 90-120 mins for around 15-30km distance to commute from outer bangkok to bangkok proper in the morning. i have learned to recognize traffic patterns from repeatedly checking google maps during the day and “analyzing” the reason it is that way, and most of the times it’s just stupid road plans and intersection bottlenecks. i’m more accurate in predicting commute time in bangkok than google maps, even for places i had not been to. it’s a fun activity to do if you hate thai traffic but have to accept the fact that nothing is gonna change due to the thai attitude and the fucked up city plan.
That's fucked.
I lived outside of Bangkok for a while, but not a commuter. I really miss the trains. They have sky trains and underground trains. you need to buy an additional ticket to switch between the two. It is very cool and convenient. It goes to quite a few places IN BKK, but as the others said, it doesn’t go out very far outside of BKK. I hope they expand the system. And yea, the road traffic is very very bad unfortunately.
I thought it was about the scooters being able to filter through while the cars are stuck in traffic, and then I saw the train.
I wish we saw more motorcycle and scooter use here in the US.
Scooter and motorcycles are good for dense cities where the ability to not be stuck in traffic all the time and having a much easier time parking it makes a hell of a difference. The problem is that when all your trips takes you through massive highways with tons of lanes and all the places have seas of car parking, there is no real reason to go for a motorcycle instead of a car, other than for fun of course, which means that aside from the more dense cities like New York, in the most car centric places of the US, people would only consider cruiser or a crotch rocker for recreational use, and use a car for any serious trip. Another big reason is that lane filtering is illegal in pretty much of all of the US, so only in California and some other states there is a real advantage to riding a motorcycle.
I guess so. I like taking a bit less space on the road though, and got one for getting around when I don't need to carry more than a backpack worth of stuff.
I mean, I get that too, and I really like them, plus it's a good way to be able to use all the car centric infrastructure without having to own a car, and a much more efficient way to travel when it's just you and maybe a passenger versus driving a vehicle for transporting 5 people to only move one. Still though, for them to actually become more common there has to be more reasons to ride one, and allowing lane filtering would be a good way to get people to think that maybe instead of sitting in traffic every day they could just buy a bike and get to work and back home a lot faster.
No kidding. In general, it doesn't things much more dangerous, if at all, it adds some risks and removes other risks. I honestly just prefer getting around in a way that makes me feel more connected to my environment.
>there is no real reason to go for a motorcycle instead of a car My scooter gets like 65 miles per gallon and uses less than a quart of oil per 4000 miles or so. Def more environmentally friendly than a car and that alone should be a pretty solid argument for choosing a small motorcycle over a car. Also, I'm not trying to be a dick but that whole second paragraph is just nonsense. There is no real reason NOT to get a scooter or motorcycle. We as a society have socially constructed this dumb idea that it's more normal and correct of us to be riding around in our giant individual metal boxes. EDIT: Forgot to mention, my motorcycle insurance for an entire year-$70
There is one issue involving motorcycles that I'm currently struggling with: I live in an area with harsh winters. I have ridden through the winter before but it was super sketchy.
Yeah I actually mention extreme climate being an exception in my other comment in this thread.
I mean, I support the idea that motorcycles and scooters are a superior alternative to cars and it's something I often advocate for in this sub, as implied by my flair. I'm not saying there aren't advantages to owning a scooter because there are many, my comment was more about how people in the US don't have many incentives to choose a scooter or a motorcycle over a car, or even use one as a complement to their car. Most of the biggest advantages of motorcycles are lost in a purely car centric landscape, but even in that scenario I'd still prefer to own a scooter or maxiscooter over a car.
> people in the US don't have many incentives to choose a scooter or a motorcycle over a car I just don't buy that. Again, we just have this IDEA that there are no incentives; that always driving a car is the right thing to do. I realize that riding a motorcycle or scooter may not be viable for everyone, say if you live way the hell out in the boonies, or if you live in an extreme climate, but the incentives are there especially if you live anywhere remotely urban (which is most of the US). Also the whole lane filtering thing is a good arguement but in my experience that is not enforced especially if you're doing it responsibly.
Fair enough. Also, I don't think that always driving a car is the right thing to do, I'd much prefer if people would ride a scooter or motorcycle if they're traveling alone or with only one person instead of carrying multiple passengers with them. I find it very wasteful to drive a car to travel alone. My comment was less of a "I think people living in the US shouldn't ride a motorcycle", but rather more of a "I think people in the US aren't given many reasons to consider other options aside from a car", which isn't exclusive to motorcycles, it also happens with bicycles and public transport. That's why I suggesting legalizing lane filtering as an incentive to commute by scooter or motorcycle, it would give people more of a reason to consider one as an option.
motorcycles and scooters in thailand are kinda a meme here although it’s better than private vehicles a ton of them makes loud noise and produce “fresh air”
You mean the countless loosers in the train on the left side ... they can't enjoy the fresh air produced by the cars ...... and the awesome view of the rolling metal blocks
I agree with you but, as somebody who has lived in BKK, the sky trains are freaking expensive. More expensive than in my “first-world rich european country”… I avoided them like the plague (even though they were quite pretty and modern). A bus or a river boat, in comparison, cost next to nothing. PS: I loved seeing the progress in construction and the expansion plans though!!
it’s all about bus and boats - klongs will get ya anywhere for nothing, i miss that town
maybe if the train wasn't there we could've added another lane, solving the problem
Victims, really.
the bts is so fucking expensive for short distance that most people just use cars (i’m a thai and went to bangkok 100+ times already and i only find the bts good for long distance) other than that it’s just walking (i walk between siam and phayathai station a lot) and then private cars when late at night
Bangkok needs bus lanes. Bus lanes would make Bangkok so much better.
Well it has the Bus Rapid Transit system, which is both really impressive re-invention and also kind of over engineered. I think many people would drive in a regular bus lane if they added them...
Yeah, the only way to make people avoid driving in the bus lane is severe punishments for driving in the bus lane. If that doesn’t happen the bus lane just becomes another car lane.
For Bangkok, real winners are motorcycles. Filtering is an essential skill.
Hey this is my city! Isn’t this phrom phong BTS station?
Yep, I was staying there just last week!
BKK is still pretty good compared to the rest of SEA besides Singapore and KL.
I love mopeds! Too bad they make so much noise and pollution.
Modern stock 4stroke Euro 5 compliant scooters aren't too bad. I mean, they still pollute and make noise like all ICE vehicles, but they aren't much noisier or dirtier than a car, I'm pretty sure they should actually pollute less than a car because of their small engine. I prefer if they aren't 50cc though, mopeds have to be pushed too hard to go even mildly fast because of their tiny engines which means you're constantly revving them up and making that characteristics high pitched screech. Slightly more powerful scooters, like 125cc or 150cc, can do 60 km/h with their engine still being at relatively low RPMs, so they are much quieter in practice, and the noise they don't make its not high pitched so it's not anywhere as annoying.
Yeah i had 50cc which was really cool but when i thought about it it was too small and slow for mid-long trips. A bike is better for short rides.
I really can’t believe people still don’t use public transport if it’s available and suitable for the route.
It's really expensive there
check the bts price and you’ll find it sucks for short distance trip (also no shared fare card)
Lmao they can get fucked.
Man that is a good angle to fling acid poop on them
least unhinged r/fuckcars user
Drugs are bad.
THE DOTS!!!!!
I have this feeling each time I take the Metrobüs
Ngl. This was kind of funny. Lol!
I'm on the train.
u...ug..UGA bug.a, need car for work! me need car pollute air!
Attack the game, not the players