A Tale of Two Cities

Traffic enforcers in Bangkok are always ready to bring special scissors in order to trim the umbilical cords of new born babies in the city’s street every year to mothers who go into labor on their ways to the hospital. This scenario is not surprising since the capital city is very well-known for traffic jams. The cars which are million in numbers keep on moving slowly and carefully along bumper-to-bumper on streets that were once canals. This includes those tuk-tuks or auto rickshaws, and motorcycle taxis that loop in and out boundless lines of cars.

The traffic system would have fallen down in the past if not because of public transportation. Among the eleven million people, there are seven million registered vehicles in the record. The Skytrain is one of the best public transportation that contributes in the improvement of traffic congestion. It started the operation in the year 1998 by Siemens and it is located in a long bridgelike structure which ranges from twelve to thirty meters. The Skytrain operates for about two-minute period during rush hours which has a total of six hundred thousand passengers. It runs from downtown Bangkok to the north, southeast, and southwest, serving thirty two stations.

The major cities of Asia like Bangkok and the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, are developing every year for about six percent which made them Asia’s powerful economic countries. However, there is a disadvantage. Even though the standard speed of Bangkok’s traffic has increased from less than ten kilometers per hour at ultimate times in 1998 to 18 kilometers per hour in present time that is still a critical. It may still get bad since the World Bank anticipates a sixty percent growth of Thais living in big cities by the year 20150.

H. Breuer