The solution to better job accessibility for low-income people in Bangkok calls for higher integration between different modes and networks of transport, especially improvements on the bus services. The tremendous rise of motorcycle use among the Bangkok population can be viewed as a response to the severe traffic congestion, which in turn poses serious negative effects on public transport. While the higher-income population opt for a convenient way out through private automobile, the low-income population find their solution through motorcycles. However, the use of motorcycle in Bangkok has negative social and environmental impacts, since it is a very dangerous way of traveling and its low-capacity engines causes high pollution.
The survey data suggests that increase in popularity of motorcycle use may be due to low accessibility to the bus system. Consequently, improvement on bus accessibility in terms of time and cost improvements can contribute to higher public transport use. To investigate further on this, GIS is used to show the spatial relationship between residential locations and bus accessibility.
The above map shows percentage of people who can walk from their residence to the nearest bus stop for each district in Bangkok. This seems to suggest that a higher proportion of people living in the CBD and Inner Ring of Bangkok can walk to the nearest bus stop, i.e. no bus access cost, than people living in the Outer Ring of Bangkok.
Click on District Number 1 and 2 on the map to see these differences between district with high bus access and the one with low bus access.
The Two Districts:
1st District: Vadhana 2nd District: Bang Khun Tien
The second district, which is much larger than the first district has a lot fewer bus routes serviced in only two main roads. This causes difficulty for the population to access the bus system. Improvements on bus accessibility are suggested. However, we can see from the maps that the road hierarchy in Bangkok consists of hundreds of small branched roads (called "soi" in Thai), adding bus services inside these "soi" can be problematic since the small road capacity cannot accommodate the buses. Integration of existing feeder services, often by informal transport modes such as jitneys, tricycle or motorcycle-taxi, with the bus services are therefore suggested to promote a better and more coherent transportation network in the area. This could make it easier for the population to access the bus system.
Besides improvements of bus accessibility, policies aimed at improving bus performance such as designation of the Right of Ways such as bus lanes for bus traffic are also suggested. However, in practice, implementation of this policy can face a lot of political constraints.
In terms of motorcycle use, the survey data shows overall higher trip frequency for motorcycle users than bus users. To reduce negative impacts of motorcycle use, motorcycle trips can be discouraged using Travel Demand Management (TDM) strategies. Some of the proposed TDM measures are limited parking supply and provision of cash-out parking subsidy, or store discount benefits from using transit passes, improvement of freight delivery services and provision of electronic banking and financial transactions for small businesses, for instance. In addition, to increase safety of motorcycle use, helmet regulations need to be enforced and monitored. To reduce impacts on the environment, policies that encourage the shift from the low-capacity to high-capacity engine (two-stroke to four-stroke engine) such as provision of tax credits to motorcycle companies for the production and sale of the four-stroke engine motorcycle are suggested.