This is Thailand. Home to stunning landscapes, street food and crazy traffic.
Train travel here isn’t exactly known for its speedy service either. While it can be cheap and
scenic, trains are slow and often delayed. On average, they travel at about 40 km/hr.
A trip from Bangkok to Chiang Mai by rail takes 12 hours – about 3
hours longer than the average road trip takes, depending on the traffic of course.
But that’s all about to change.
The Thai government has big plans to become the logistic hub in Southeast Asia. It's building the Trans-ASEAN Line
as a high speed rail network costing more than $67BN.
This brand new high speed railway is set to transport people and goods more
than six times faster than the current trains.
It will also serve as a connection to China’s massive rail network with the
promise of revolutionising trade and spurring growth across the continent.
But economic downturns, contract negotiations,
and challenging landscapes have all conspired to derail the scheme on
multiple occasions and some doubt they’ll ever be able to get things back on track.
Welcome to one of the world’s most challenging high speed rail projects.
For over 100 years, Thailand’s state owned railways have transported tourists,
citizens, and goods across the country.
With slow travel times and ageing tracks they are now in increasing
need of an update – but hasn’t exactly been a top priority.
Thanks to political instability and the rail sector constantly losing money,
investments and proposals are often put on hold or dissolved for years
But that all changed in 2014 when China stepped in.
The country’s massive Belt and Road Initiative is
out to better connect East Asia and Europe. One step towards that is to
create new connections within Southeast Asia – like with Thailand’s high speed railway.
I'm Greg Raymond. I'm a lecturer at the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at Australia National University.
China's been pushing the Belt and Road Initiative very hard.
Thailand doesn't like to say no to China. They're a very big, important neighbour,
a very big, important trading partner. Some there's some analysts who think that Thailand
is going to do really, really well economically out of it. But then there's others who say, no,
Thailand wont...some analysts say, well, really,
it doesn't matter. The important thing is to keep the relationship with China on a good footing.
China is Thailand’s largest trading partner, and a huge source of tourism for the country.
While it isn’t putting as much money into the new railway as was initially agreed,
it’s still involved in supplying equipment and systems – and as you
may recall the country is pretty good at building high speed rail.
On paper, the Thai network will look like this.
First, tracks need to be laid from Bangkok to the city of Nong Khai. Six Fuxing Hao
CR300 trains with eight carriages each will run on the first phase of the route
on three different types of track: ground level, elevated, and tunnel.
From here it’ll connect onto Laos’s newly constructed high-speed-rail line up into China.
The $12BN section of the network is expected to be complete in 2028,
and it could be a jumping off point for even more connections throughout Southeast Asia.
Extensions could go to Chiang Mai, Rayong, and Hua Hin and potentially on to Malaysia and Cambodia.
Now, sure on a map that looks logical, but on the ground it’s far from easy.
High speed rail works best when it runs in a straight, flat line, so in an ideal world,
you’d want to build on a flat surface with no trees, water, or houses in the way.
But this isn’t an ideal world. Thailand’s
landscape is breathtaking to look at but pretty hellish for engineers.
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Now, let’s get back to the video.
High speed rail works best when it runs in a straight flat line. So in an ideal world you want
to build on a flat surface with no trees, water, or houses in the way.
But this isn't an ideal world.
Thailand's landscape is breathtaking to look at but pretty hellish for engineers.
Engineers signing up for this project are going to find themselves contending with
almost every type of terrain, all sprinkled with delicate ecosystems and existing neighbourhoods.
It’ll mean tunnels, bridges, viaducts and lots of head-scratching along the route.
The proposed section from Bangkok to Chiang Mai
exemplifies the challenges. Here the line traverses a large swamp and lake.
Before construction could start, the project needed to pass an environmental assessment
and the team has now agreed to test water-quality throughout
construction and beyond and oversee the egg-laying habits of local birds.
But wildlife isn’t the only community being impacted.
In the link that will connect Nakhon Ratchasima to Nong Khai, around 700 households will have
to move into government housing to make way for the new high-speed rail tracks.
Now, this all takes a lot of time, money and coordination to get done. The first phase,
which is divided into 14 contracts, is behind schedule with only 15% complete as of late 2022.
While environmental and neighbourhood challenges have certainly created
obstacles for Thailand, the government agency attributes delays to the pandemic,
land acquisitions and relocating public utility lines around the site.
Phase one is supposed to be done by 2026,
but that’s looking like more and more of a distant goal.
And while the project promises to yield benefits for both countries
by bringing more opportunities for trade and tourism…it's no guarantee.
Rail isn’t the primary form of transposition in
Thailand – it accounts for just 20% of passenger traffic and 2% of cargo.
I think what we don't know is how popular the high speed rail project will be once it's finished…Now,
you know, Thailand's and particularly people in Bangkok have really loved the mass transit
systems that have put in place over the last two decades. They've got two projects once
called the sky rail, which goes above roads, and the other one is their underground subway
system. And both of those have just been, you know, progressively expanded…will people
in Thailand take to the high speed rail project to traveling by a high speed rail in a big way?
Still, both China and Thailand are betting big on the future of high
speed rail – and if the two countries can get this project off the ground,
Bangkok could soon become Southeast Asia’s next big transit hub.
You can learn more about this and the other topics on our channel over on the World's Best Construction Podcast
available now wherever you get your podcasts. And as always if you enjoyed this video and you want to get more
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