City-Level Decoupling-Case Studies

CITY-LEVEL DECOUPLING: URBAN RESOURCE FLOWS AND THE GOVERNANCE OF INFRASTRUCTURE TRANSITIONS

To combat increasing traffic congestion, the government started to build more arterial roads, ring roads, and expressways. Since Bangkok’s first expressway was built in 1981, more than 200 kilometres of elevated expressways have been built in the metropolitan area. More than 80% of the city’s daily trips during the early 1990s were by bus, cars, motorcycles and taxis. Instead of decreasing congestion, the problem became even worse: average vehicle speeds during peak hours dropped to as low as 8 km/h. 52 It took planners and policymakers many years to realize that traffic congestion did not improve with more roads and expressways. Alternative modes of transportation were desperately needed, and mass rail transit became an attractive option. To policymakers back then, the main objective of urban rail projects in Bangkok was to reduce traffic congestion, not necessarily to achieve urban sustainability. However, shifting commuters from private automobiles to rail transport significantly reduces the fossil fuel consumption and emissions associated with their mobility, making it a more environmentally friendly alternative. Master plans for urban transit were repeatedly drafted, endorsed, scrapped, revisited, and endorsed again over the years before actual projects were implemented. The first project was supposed to be in operation by the early 1990s, but political and bureaucratic issues delayed and derailed the project. There were even civic demonstrations against the project due to concerns about pollution, crime, urban aesthetics, and accidents. It was not until 1999 that the first urban railway, the Bangkok Transit System (BTS), began service. The introduction of the BTS was a turning point for Bangkok. Gradually people started to realize the benefits of mass transit, and the ridership for the BTS steadily increased. During the first few years of its operation the ridership was fewer than 150,000 trips per day, but it picked up quickly afterwards and the ridership as of September 2011 was about 500,000 trips per day. The figure was expected to increase by at least 15% in 2012. 53 The trend was further strengthened by the opening of the Bangkok Metro in 2004, the Airport Link in 2010, and two additional extensions of the BTS lines in 2009 and 2011. Four other transit lines are currently under construction. According to the current Bangkok Mass Transit Master Plan, a total of about 290 kilometres of mass rail transits will be built in Bangkok. Another ambitious plan expects the city to have almost 500 kilometres of urban rail by 2030. Even among transport planners, it is no longer fashionable to talk about expressways - mass rail transits are considered the way forward for Bangkok. Despite the short timeframe since their introduction, urban rail systems have already had a noticeable impact on the spatial structure of the city, slowing both the pace and scale of suburbanization. While the core areas of Bangkok have always been vibrant, those areas with access to the transit stations have gained greater advantages than others. Owners of commercial buildings now find ways to connect with the train stations either via Skywalk (the second-level pedestrian way) or underground tunnels. Many residential housing developers have substantially revamped their investment strategies from focusing on subdivision projects in the suburbs to condominium projects along the rail lines. According to the Government Housing Bank, only 26% of the new housing units completed in 2010 were in subdivision projects for detached houses in the suburban areas, while 42% were

25