Chapter 7 - 24 hour traffic jams


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Amongst other things, Bangkok is infamous for its notorious traffic jams. My personal record was three hours for about 5 kilometers, it was monsoon time and thus raining heavily - from my experience this usually happened in the afternoon. When it rains that heavy, the drain system fills up quickly and the roads are flooded. This slows down the traffic until it comes to a grinding halt. So this is one of the reasons for the traffic jams. But it is not raining all the time, so why are there still traffic jams. "Probably too many cars on roads which are too small", you might think. But this is only half the story. I once had the opportunity to talk to a chap named Anthony who had successfully implemented the London Traffic Control System SCOOT. And now his company was asked to implement a similar system for Bangkok. Anthony told me that the main reasons for the constant congestion was the fact that there are only a few main Roads in Bangkok, like for example Sukhumvit Road and a RAMA IV Road.

These are 4 - 8 lane roads with many narrow alleys, called Sois spreading out from the Roads to the left and right. From a bird's eye view, this looks very much like fish bones. And fish bones are not connected at the pointy end, nor are those Sois. This means that any traffic between the Sois is forced onto the main roads. And if the destination happens to be "down stream", that isn't that bad. But let's assume that a car wants to go from Sukhumvit Soi 43 to Soi 41 (remember in Thailand is left side traffic). Then it has to go to the next intersection (Soi 53/36), do a u-turn once, then go up the opposite direction until a traffic light past the destination Soi. Then it has to do a second u-turn, traverse two or three lanes to the left and do a left turn into the destination Soi 41. I myself had to do this stunt frequently and it could take anywhere from two minutes to one hour, depending on the traffic situation.

"Why are the Sois not connected ?", you might ask. The reason is that someone built the Sois to their need which usually meant that they had their houses at the end. So they did not have any reason to connect "their" Soi to any other one. In fact if you look at the Bangkok map you will see areas of the city which are complete wilderness because no one can ever get there. Another reason might be that Bangkok used to be very much like Venice, in fact, it was called Venice of the East and many of the Sois used to be waterways in former time. Nobody has ever developed a road master plan for Bangkok. And because the city has been growing so fast, any plan developed now is simply too late. Moreover, no traffic control system can improve this situation, either.

But a computer controlled traffic system can definitely improve the co-ordination between the traffic lights of intersections along a main road. Before computers were used, these traffic lights had been controlled by police men sitting in a small booth, and this was the problem. Every intersection was controlled by one or several police men not having a clue what happened at the next or the previous intersection. During my five-year stay in Thailand, I had to observe these uncoordinated efforts almost every day. Sitting in my car, patiently waiting for the traffic lights to finally become green. And when it finally was green I had to be lucky that the police man at the next intersection also switched "his" traffic light to green, otherwise the traffic just got stuck right in the middle of the intersection - arrrgghhhhh !

"Of course traffic lights controlled by a central computer which has all the data about the in and out flowing traffic are much more efficient than any human, and they don't suffer from polluted air and the heat like the police men", Andrew said. However, the underpaid police were not very happy about the Bangkok Administration changing the traffic lights to be controlled by computers because that would mean the loss of a never ending source of income to them. I knew what that meant, after wondering for quite a while what's going on at those Bangkok traffic lights, my wife told me how it worked - and I assume it still does:

The lights turn red and the cars stop. As soon as that has happened many beggars appear, either selling garlands or cleaning windows - which usually leaves the windows dirtier than they have been before. Basically the traffic lights stay red so long until every driver bought at least a garland or had the windows "cleaned". Then the lights jump to green until the first car, not having a garland dangling from the rear view mirror approaches the intersection. The lights turn red and the beggars appear again. It is obvious that the police men get their share out of the money which drivers give to the beggars. Anywhere else this might be called corruption, but for the poorly paid police this is the only way to make ends meet !

This was 1997, meanwhile the SCOOT System is working, but I hear that still today police use the override button to control the traffic lights manually... hmm.. why would that be ;-)


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