TIME TO SOLVE THE TRANSPORTATION PROBLEMS ON PHUKET
For the first time, authorities on Phuket (and in Bangkok) are seriously considering and discussing the island’s public transport needs.
Talks are being held now about tuk-tuks and airport taxis, which is good. Yet it’s as if, somehow, the two are separate problems while in fact they are very much related. Therefore, they will need to looked at in that way.
Minor improvements to public transport are on the way in ‘Phuket Town’. A few more pink seung taew buses will soon be introduced there. This is particularly good news for local people and schoolchildren.
But there is a bigger picture and one of these days, the one-baht coin might drop. ‘Phuket Town’ actually officially became Phuket City some years ago, when the population grew beyond 70,000 citizens.
These days, the entire island of Phuket is a predominantly urban region including adjacent towns and suburbs; like a metropolitan area, with more than one million inhabitants.
Phuket’s villages are constantly expanding. As a matter of fact, some tourists even refer to the whole island as being a ‘city’.
Those who continue to refer to Phuket City as ‘Phuket Town’ are clearly living in the past or longing for the past. Times when towns and villages each dealt with their own problems and their own transport issues in their own way.
But these days are long gone. And until the governing authorities and the tuk-tuk and taxi drivers and the island’s media start treating Phuket as the kind of metropolis it is these days and not as separate villages or towns, a solution to the island’s public transportation needs will never be found.
The flaws in that kind of thinking in the past are painfully obvious. The tuk-tuk system is failing because traditional village rivalries mean that customers have to be charged a return fare, even though the passengers are only going one way.
The customer pays for the tuk-tuk to return empty to the ‘village’. In the efficient, transparent 21st century, there is only one term for that: it is a rip-off.
The same rules apply at the Phuket International Airport. The airport itself is expanding and prospering from a modern approach to air transport. But it is suffering from a 19th century approach to road transport.
Once passengers have landed, it is as though the airport administrators no longer have to live up to the international standards.
Hopefully the realities of the island and its needs will be understood so that a much needed change will come. And it should come rather sooner than later.
Incidents of violence between tuk-tuk drivers and tourists are a daily occurrence lately and highlight the need for reforms on Phuket in regard to transportation.
And reform needs to come quickly because these days, with the internet, news travel fast and it is difficult to keep things secret.
There used to be a time when the rest of the world was far away. Not anymore. With applications like e-mail, blogs, facebook and the likes, people all around the world are informed about anything that happens within minutes.
is there anyone out there who hasn’t heard of the jet-ski scams, and of the world-first insurance scheme that is designed to tame the extortionists and rip-off merchants?
One problem apparently solved, a few more yet to go . . .
While Phuket will continue to be a playground for the elite, more change has to come, and quickly.
Once upon a time, Phuket was able to rely on its natural beauty alone. But As Governor Wichai Praisa-ngob said when he arrived on the island in 2009: ‘Phuket has many problems’.
He has done his best to fix a couple.
nevertheless, because of the Internet these days, the whole world is aware of Phuket’s remaining problems, and watching to see what happens.
Phuket has missed one previous ideal opportunity for reform. A fresh start could have been made after the 2004 tsunami. Many things were promised but nothing ever happened. Instead, greed took over.
The result is that Phuket still has its great beaches and coral reefs. But who wants to come to any holiday destination, knowing they will be overcharged outrageously every time they attempt to travel from point A to point B?
Back in 2005, after the tsunami, at a time when fugitive ex-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra was swinging the scepter, there was no way his ruling Thai Rak Thai party would even consider spending a single Baht on Phuket since the island has been a long-standing fortress for the opposition Democrat Party.
Now change has come, and more of it is needed on Phuket. The time is right. The world is watching.
It is time for the Government to prevent more tourists ending up with broken arms and busted faces.
It needs to give the island a public transport strategy; something it has required for decades.
It cannot be done in a way that all of the sudden makes more than 1000 tuk-tuk and taxi drivers jobless. But it needs to be done in a way that makes Phuket good value again.
Phuket’s future as a tourist destination for the superrich is assured. But we have to keep this a place where the rest of the world will be able to afford to keep on coming here too.