Eighteen months after installing road barriers to restrict traffic in and out of Bali Hai Pier, Pattaya now is removing them.
Deputy Mayor Wutisak Rermkitkarn met with municipal police, transportation and public works staffers Oct. 18 to undo the work done in February 2020 which, at the time, was described as being done to improve convenience for tourists.
Unsurprisingly, the deputy mayor described the rollback as being for the convenience of tourists.
Before the pandemic, in February last year, Pattaya was wrangling with serious traffic congestion, unruly public-transport drivers and long lines of tour buses. So the city placed concrete barriers at the intersection leading into the South Pattaya pier to prevent private businesses from co-opting city streets, keep traffic flowing properly and prevent buses from taking all available parking.
Those tour buses are now a distant memory and Thai tourists – Pattaya’s life blood until foreign travelers return en masse – are complaining about … traffic congestion, this time caused by city hall’s bungled restriction of road lanes.
So now the barriers will come out and all lanes will be open again, that is until the tour buses return, and vans and baht buses resume parking wherever they want.
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