In three months, the angels will return to the clogged thoroughfares of Lost-Angel-ist. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, one who's never shy of making the impossible still impossible, has set his sights on, gasp, fixing Bangkok traffic, which is like untangling the Mobius strip or finding the end of Ariadne's thread. The soundbite-ready part of the PM's order is that he wants to see "tangible results in three months", which promptly sent related authorities scurrying in all directions to make it real.
Usually careless with his words, the PM this time has chosen them wisely: "tangible results" could mean anything, such as the completion of one tunnel or flyover, which would be sufficient to fulfil his claim. Twenty-one years ago, we heard something similar, only more forceful, more cocky: Thaksin Shinawatra, then a deputy PM in the government of Banharn Silpa-archa, thundered a promise that he would fix Bangkok traffic in six months. Like the current PM, he went around and made a show of knowing how to solve the Sphinx's great riddle, which he didn't. He worked with policemen, inspected roads, went up in a helicopter to look at the gridlock from above, and vowed that for a CEO who had solved many other problems, this one would be easy peasy.
And then?
I nearly wept when I got stuck on Chaeng Watthana one interminable evening last week. A friend became depressed and almost had to improvise a chamber pot while travelling a few kilometres from Klong Toey to Sukhumvit Soi 1. Children grow one or two micro-millimetres as they go from Silom to Vacharapol. On any given Friday, Google Maps' traffic report resembles a brain haemorrhage with blood-red veins trickling down every line on the screen, a sight that sends a chill down the spine of motorists. In Bangkok, it's always From Here to Eternity. Getting there is not a purpose but a consolation. The roads are a sprawling insane asylum and we're all inmates, unable to argue or flee.
When Thaksin made the brash promise that our roads would ease up in six months, we had hope. It evaporated quickly after it became clear that solving Bangkok's snarl-ups was beyond the man's ability -- beyond any man's ability -- and the former PM later admitted as much. He got carried away by the tide of support he was enjoying and his political fever dream tricked him into believing that he could punch above his weight (that applied to other dimensions of his career in public office as well). And now we have PM Prayut -- presumably with months more on the job though, who knows, it could become years and years -- pledging to vanquish Bangkok's world-infamous traffic blues. Is this, too, political speak -- a campaign promise in the lead-up to the (imaginary) election?
But this time we don't have hope. It took us a few months to begin laughing at Thaksin; with Gen Prayut, the ridicule began almost immediately. We know from the start that this is undoable. The PM's direction in tackling the chock-a-block traffic mostly concerns technical details, such as stricter enforcement of traffic laws, an increased speed limit on the expressways, or higher compensation for traffic policemen who work long hours. He believes Bangkok doesn't have enough roads and that more must be built -- that's partly true, but the Mobius strip of this is that construction in many strategic areas is the cause of the current carpocalypse. He talked about providing more "feeders" that would carry people from small alleys to public transport, such as the BTS or bus stops, as if the BTS or public busses have the credibility of a reliable saviour.
I'm sure people in, say, Jakarta or Manila know this feeling too; the Southeast Asian feeling of being a lifelong prisoner in one's own metropolis, the feeling that some sort of transport construction has been going on for four decades and yet a crawl remains a crawl. In our context, fixing Bangkok's traffic problems is deeply related to fixing Thailand's problems: as long as the city keeps growing, as long as people from upcountry keep moving here, as long as the middle-class expands and is concentrated here, the jam won't let up. As long as the budget for development and transport pours into the city, as long as Bangkok is (wrongly) billed as an abode of angels, as long as the decentralisation of power, money, progress, infrastructure and everything else doesn't happen in other parts of the country, the gridlock will continue, even spread, as we've seen ourselves.
More roads and flyovers are a treatment, not a cure. More public transport is certainly necessary, though the issues of affordability and accessibility remain paramount. In three months, the PM said, things will improve, as if he can order a solution to our most chronic problem. We're thinking of 30 years.
Kong Rithdee is Life Editor, Bangkok Post.