The State Railway of Thailand (SRT) says it has cleared out all people who were illegally occupying land along the planned high-speed train route from Suvarnabhumi airport to U-tapao airport, and that it is almost ready to hand over the entire construction site of this route to contractors.
All 302 people found illegally occupying the land along this section of the high-speed train project have been relocated, said Chayatham Phromsorn, permanent secretary for transport.
The progress on the SRT’s preparation of the construction site for handing over to constructors was reported at Tuesday's meeting of the Transport Ministry’s committee tasked with preparing the construction sites for this project, he said.
Overall the work of clearing up all 5,521 rai of land along the 170km high-speed rail route between Suvarnabhumi airport in Samut Prakan and U-tapao airport in Rayong was about 88% complete, he said.
This construction site is therefore expected to be handed over to contractors by September, one month ahead of schedule, he said.
The route is a part of the high-speed train system to link three airports — Don Mueang, Suvarnabhumi and U-Tapao.
The land expropriation work is almost done as well, with 634 out of all 737 land expropriation contracts signed and 3.5 billion baht out of all 4.1 billion baht in compensation paid, he said.
The other related work of moving public utility lines away from the construction site has already been done on 257 out of all 396 spots, while the rest are expected to be done by September, he said.
Contractors, meanwhile, have already begun designing their construction works, surveying on the construction site, building construction worker camps and adjusting some parts of the land in preparation for the coming construction, he said.
The SRT Electrified Train Co (SRTET), which runs the Airport Rail Link (ARL), said all 256 staff members of the ARL will by October be transferred to work for the Red Line of Bangkok’s electric rail system, as the new operator of the ARL is taking over its operations.
The new operator is Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane SpA, a state-owned holding company that manages infrastructure and services on the Italian rail network.