The Pattaya City Council approved a 1.9-million-baht payout to a consultant for the suspended city monorail project.
Pattaya, in 2019, commissioned a 70-million-baht feasibility study into a tram system or overhead monorail. One public hearing was held in December that year and, in July 2020, the Thammasat University consultants said the study was 80% complete, but needed a second public hearing to conclude the work.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, that hearing never happened and the contract expired uncompleted in September 2020. Pattaya was required to pay a cancellation fee of 1.7 million.
The money has been tangled up in bureaucratic red tape for more than a year, with the university thinking it would get its money after the Chonburi governor signed off last fall. But Pattaya officials felt the budget to pay the fee required city council approval, and, at the time, there was no city council.
The future of the monorail project remains uncertain as its unknown if Pattaya can continue the previous study or would have to hire a new consultant.
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