Having mopped up mobs of street vendors, evicted over-parked speedboat drivers and rousted squatters on public property, it’s time for Pattaya authorities to take on the Pattaya Bus Station taxi situation.
Amidst all the recent talk about baht buses and motorcycle taxis downtown – think set routes, fixed rates and registered drivers – there has been no mention of the worst blight on Pattaya’s public-transport sector: The drivers who monopolize the first port of call for many of the city’s tourists.
The Roong Reuang Coach Co.-operated terminal has been a world of its own when it comes to taxi service. Drivers perennially have charged what they wanted and increased fares at five times the rate of inflation. The drivers operating there wield such influence that baht buses driving by the bus station don’t dare pick up passengers who try to find a legally priced alternative ride into town.
Basically, tourists – or “victims” in this case – have no choice but to pay far over the odds.
It used to be the case – as recently as 2012 – that a shared baht bus ride to Beach Road – even Walking Street – was 20 baht. While double the usual fare from North Pattaya, it seemed reasonable to most, even though passengers had to wait until every last centimeter of space was filled with sweaty bodies and bags before a driver would leave.
By 2014, that price had increased to 30 baht. Today you must fork over 50 baht and still wait the requisite 20 minutes for the same shared ride into town.
Suddenly, the overpriced motorcycle taxis don’t seem that bad a deal.
Chonburi Land Transport Department fare regulations state rides of two kilometers or less should not exceed 25 baht. The third through fifth kilometer adds only 5 baht each to the fare. Distances of more than five kilometers are negotiable.
You stand a better chance of getting caught in a Pattaya snowstorm than actually finding a local driver who will charge those rates – or get the police or military to enforce them.
One driver, who said he has been working the bus station for 10 years, on Jan. 14 charged 100 baht for a 4.1-kilometer ride to a hotel on Soi 11 near Soi Buakaow. The legal fare is 40 baht.
His passenger was a frequent visitor to Pattaya from Bangkok. The man handed over 80 baht – what he usually is charged – and began to walk away, only to be followed into the hotel by the foul-mouthed, threatening driver demanding the additional 20 baht.
The angry, rattled passenger paid up, then took the driver’s vest number and called the Pattaya Contact Center at 1337. The report was taken, but it’s doubtful it will have much effect.
It’s not as if authorities don’t know about the bus station racket: In February last year, then Deputy Mayor Verawat Khakhay said he experienced first-hand the price gouging long suffered by Pattaya tourists and locals at the hands of motorcycle taxis.
He said he was charged 100 baht, or almost 35 baht a kilometer, to travel from North to South Pattaya.
He vowed to the Pattaya Business & Tourism Association that he’d make a serious effort to have the city’s rogue transportation sector comply with the law.
The issue was never mentioned publicly again.
The Pattaya Bus Station is a primary entry point in the city to hundreds of thousands of tourists a year, both foreign and Thai. Their first encounters with Pattaya locals are taxi drivers.
To be ripped off and bullied within minutes of arriving in Pattaya does a tremendous disservice to the city’s tourism image. And it’s completely unnecessary.
The army, through the National Council for Peace and Order’s office in Banglamung District, needs to take on the vested, protected interests at the Roong Reuang station just as it did the powerful speedboat operators and the rich property owners who had built hotels and businesses on public property.
Both those sectors had operated without fear of consequence for decades under Pattaya’s former elected leaders. The military, for all its faults, has been effective in digging up the corrupt roots of Pattaya’s entrenched special interests.
The question is, does the military have the guts to take on the bus station taxi situation?
Bob James
