Dear all,

Thank you for your suggestions (on and off list) to the question I asked. As it seems, there are many opinions regarding this. Nonetheless, one of the strongest points that was made was the fact that Bangkok’s current transport situation would make it difficult to implement “full” car-free day, since accesibility has not yet been solved to a point where anybody who normally uses a car, motorcycle or tuk tuk can take a bus, BTS or MRTA. Based on this fact, it would not only be counterproductive to ban motorcyles or tuk tuks, it would also be so to ban cars! A car-free day in Bangkok would just produce a highly inaccesible city for most, and an annoying experience rather than a pleasant one.

However, some of you also made suggestions to use other options. For example, Bangkok has a couple of “car-free areas” which are supposedly closed for cars, but they are really not very strictly enforced (e.g. Khao San Road). These streets’ enforcement to become a real car-free area is a better choice of awareness raising. This project can be developed easily thanks to the help of a study by Michael King to the GTZ SUTP project and the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority in 2004.

Also, another initiative that was suggested was a car-free Sunday, like the one that Bogotá has had since 1974 and Quito for two years now. Actually, few people know that Bangkok did have one of these initiatives along Silom Road some years ago. Though this development decayed and is currently not working, the fact that it existed can make it also more probable to reactivate.

Finally, there are alternative initiatives that can complement these measures. One of them is doing specific activities with children where they would give their opinion about cars, pollution, Bangkok’s situation, etc. Their verbatims, drawings and other products would be diffused through media to show how they react to the existing traffic congestion. Many other variants and similar activities can be developed easily.

In conclusion, I would like to thank you all for your comments and arguments. They have proven very useful in deciding wether or not it would be coherent to develop a car free day this year, or if the previously described activities would permit a succesful car-free day in the future.

Thanks for your help. More comments and questions are highly welcome.

Carlos F. Pardo

Project Coordinator

GTZ Sustainable Urban Transport Project (SUTP)

Room 0942, Transport Division, UN-ESCAP

ESCAP UN Building

Rajadamnern Nok Rd.

Bangkok 10200, Thailand

Tel: +66 (0) 2 - 288 2576

Fax: +66 (0) 2 - 280 6042

Mobile: +66 (0) 1 - 772 4727

e-mail: carlos.pardo@...

Website: www.sutp.org