Following their poorly planned, botched attempt to lock down the city, Pattaya officials on Wednesday actually tested their checkpoints to determine the impact on traffic.
Last week’s attempted lockdown was a classic case of Pattaya officials announcing a plan without thinking it through first. Traffic chaos quickly resulted when police, Pattaya and Banglamung officials shut down streets to check for identification cards and fevers.
It took a week, but a new plan was devised and on April 15 a dry run was staged to ensure the same problems would not reoccur.
Intended to go into operation today will be eight checkpoints along Sukhumvit Road entering the city at its north and south ends at a major intersections.
Ingress and egress lanes were clearly marked and, this time, traffic didn’t jam as badly.
With the checkpoints set up on Sukhumvit with the intent of screening entering downtown, Pattaya is making no effort to protect the “dark side”, or East Pattaya. While residents there consider themselves residents of Pattaya, the area east of Sukhumvit actually is not inside the legal city boundary and is governed by Nongprue Subdistrict.
So, for the intents of the lockdown, the many foreigners and Thais living on sois Nernplabwan, Khao Talo, Khao Noi, Nong Yai, Railway Road and other large residential streets will effectively be locked out of downtown, treated the same as travelers from Bangkok and other provinces.
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