Pattaya city moving forward on Monorail project, chooses monorail over tram or subway

Pattaya-

Yesterday afternoon Pattaya City held a meeting with top city officials, residents, local business leaders and managers of a feasibility management project at City Hall to discuss the long planned monorail project for the area.

We have covered this several times in the past here at The Pattaya News, including speaking about the current feasibility project and work being done around the monorail. You can see some of our prior articles about this below:

Pattaya tram program moving forward, first town hall completed this week, 74 million baht approved for study

City government discusses monorail system to further develop Pattaya as a world class tourist destination

 

Pattaya City aims for Beach Road construction to be finished by February 13 of next year

The city had stated last year when the waste management construction work being done around town, including installation of larger drain systems and moving electrical cables underground, that once this work was completed the city would begin addressing a monorail once again. Despite the Covid-19 Coronavirus situation causing a several month delay to the construction work being done around Pattaya, the drainage project is expected to be wrapped up in the next several months, which means City Hall is once again focusing on a better public transportation system.

Three options had been brought up as part of a feasibility project, including a monorail, a tram on the street level and a subway. The feasibility project and study is estimated alone to cost 70 million baht, City Hall Deputy Mayor Manot Nongyai stated to the press yesterday afternoon.

This project is part of the overall Eastern Economic Corridor work, which is designed to improve the overall infrastructure in the Eastern part of Thailand and involves multiple individual projects, including the new Map Ta Phut tollway that just opened. It also includes a new terminal the U-Tapeo airport that recently opened.

You can read more about all the different projects and proposals for the Eastern Economic Corridor project here.

Pongtawee Lertpanyawit, a manager of the feasibility study project, told the forum yesterday afternoon that the study had taken into consideration a tram, a monorail and a subway and had decided that the most feasible option for the Pattaya area was a monorail system.  He added that this system would cost less than the other two options as well as cause less impact to the area in terms of construction.

The current plan is to install a nine kilometre monorail which would run from the Pattaya railway station via a motorway, Northern Pattaya Road, Pattaya Second Road, and the Thapphraya intersection to Bali Hai Pier, which is the main route for those who travel through Pattaya, Mr. Pongtawee told the forum yesterday. There would be a total of eleven stops on the route.

Deputy Mayor Manot Nongyai told the forum that the city has been plagued by traffic problems despite solid economic growth in the city (Pre-Covid, of course) and that plans for future development must include a better public transportation program for the city that is also cleaner and involves less vehicles on the roads.

Manot stated that he believed that tourists would return to Pattaya in “great numbers” as the Covid-19 situation calmed down and recovered worldwide in the next year and pent up demand for travel increased after people were locked down for months in their own countries and homes.

As for investment and the fund for the project, Mr. Manot stated this would be under a public and private partnership, similar to the remainder of the Eastern Economic Corridor project and more information would be revealed in the future. It is expected that some of the investment for this project would come from potentially overseas.

 

 

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Adam Judd
Mr. Adam Judd is the Co-owner of TPN Media since December 2017. He is originally from Washington D.C., America, but has also lived in Dallas, Sarasota, and Portsmouth. His background is in retail sales, HR, and operations management, and has written about news and Thailand for many years. He has lived in Pattaya for over nine years as a full-time resident, is well known locally and been visiting the country as a regular visitor for over a decade. His full contact information, including office contact information, can be found on our Contact Us page below. Stories please e-mail Editor@ThePattayanews.com About Us: https://thepattayanews.com/about-us/ Contact Us: https://thepattayanews.com/contact-us/