Pattaya's horrendous traffic problems only getting worse - much worse

[Gaybutton]

I remember when driving from one end of town to another would rarely take more than 10 minutes. Now I consider it fortunate if the same trip can be made in less than 40 minutes.

Unless the city does something truly significant to alleviate the problems, then the only thing I can think of to do on heavy traffic days is to go wherever I need to go either very early in the morning or very late at night.

Drivers coming in cars to Pattaya from elsewhere, I'll be damned if I know how they manage to find a place to park. And then they face the same problems just trying to leave Pattaya to go back home.

I'm not holding my breath for anything to happen any time soon. How many years have they been doing little other then talking about this and how many absurd ideas have been tried, none of which worked?
_________________________________________

Pattaya traffic is overtourism – Sunday Editorial

By Pattaya Mail

December 1, 2024

The weekend’s fireworks bonanza was another banging success for Pattaya marketing. But the silent chaos on the roads as queuing traffic took over an hour to traverse the city at peak times illustrates the downside of overtourism. Pattaya’s ancient highways were not designed for 100,000 vehicles all competing for space at the same time.

Thailand’s success in recovering from the covid ghost image has been staggering. From March 2020 to June 2021, there were no tourists in Thailand by law. Then came the “Sandbox” notion which limited foreign vacationers to 15,000 a month. But from July 2022, all barriers were dropped except for a vaccination certificate, a requirement waived from October of that year. International arrivals zoomed like never before and the calendar year 2024 looks like being similar to pre-pandemic 2019: almost 40 million for Thailand as a whole. Around one third of that total use Pattaya as a base.

Several factors mean that the traffic chaos in Pattaya has become worse. In an attempt to raise local revenue, public holidays have been increased to enable more long weekends. In Pattaya, this has stimulated domestic tourists, especially car drivers from Bangkok, to enjoy the cultural festivals which have been aggressively promoted. More and more huge hotels are being constructed in the city, but often without adequate parking for the coaches which service the guests. Thus the big buses frequently park on the roads nearby making free-flow traffic impossible.

The numbers situation is likely to get worse. Although Chinese numbers have declined somewhat, Indian arrivals are likely to boom once U-tapao airport, near Pattaya, starts receiving flights from Indian cities across the country. Direct flights from the USA to Bangkok are scheduled to begin in February 2025, one of many expanding intercontinental air schedules. Meanwhile the liberalization of property laws, which the government says may be particularly advantageous to Thai tourist-orientated cities, is now firmly on the political agenda.

Pattaya City Hall does its best with increased use of one-way streets, painted red lines and readjustment of traffic light green signals. On particular weekends, major roads are closed or traffic rerouted although the buildup on neighboring streets is often horrendous. Traffic police these days are rarely visible in the city and most control booths in or near the city center are unmanned. No parking restrictions are increasingly ignored especially where they serve no apparent purpose. Why does Pattaya have painted Bus Stop signs when the experiment was abandoned years ago?

Some observers believe the answer lies in punishing thousands of traffic offenders by spot fines issued without receipts. That’s unlikely to happen. Apart from the inevitable heated arguments and fists – hundreds daily – leading to bad international publicity, the reality in any case is that Pattaya’s roads are woefully inadequate for the volume of traffic trying to use them. Other critics would like to see congestion charges to come into the city, the practicalities of which have not even begun to be addressed. As regards 2025, the only answer is to grit your teeth and carry on.

https://www.pattayamail.com/latestnews/ ... ial-482034

[Jun]

1 Charge vehicles for driving in Pattaya. Singapore had this when I was in school. Does Thailand have to be 40 years behind?
2 Charge vehicles for parking in Pattaya
3 Introduce a proper bus network with defined stops, card payment and an 8 baht fare
4 Banish Songthaew from the centre of Pattaya. Send them to run defined feeder routes to the bus network. Again, with card payment. There will be more demand for these due to the charges for driving in the centre. Besides, a proper service and a complete network will attract more customers.
5. Ban traffic from beach road, Soi Bukhao and a few other selected routes.
6 Have bus lanes with cameras to detect unauthorised use. So that the buses will be the fastest form of transport.
7 Long term, introduce trams. Proper trams about 1 foot above the road, designed to interfere with road traffic as much as possible and be convenient for the users. Not some ridiculous monorail, where it will take so long to get in and out of stations that no one uses it for short trips.

With all this, I think they might even get more tourists.

[Gaybutton]

With all this, I think they might even get more tourists.

The trouble is probably none of those things will actually happen.

[Jun]

The trouble is probably none of those things will actually happen.

Of course.
This is a town where so many pedestrian crossings go half way across the road.
So they have't even mastered the basics yet, never mind anything requiring some intelligence.

[Jun]

Yesterday I was part of a rolling roadblock on second road. A dark blue Songthaew.

There, the most profitable songthaew are the ones who go slowly and loiter every time there is a prospective customer. Most attempt to achieve a compromise between profit and speed, but this one was maximising profit. I think he went most of the way in first gear.
So, each time I come to Pattaya, I am reminded to try and pick one that's making good progress.