Bangkok Sky Train

When I want to travel around in Bangkok, I wonder about how this city try to escape from its bad traffic jam.

Most tourists in the world already knew, that Bangkok, as Jakarta, has a huge problem regarding to traffic jam. On recently years, Bangkok has tried to get out from that problem by building sky train system and mass rapid transportation in terms of underground train.

Bangkok Sky Train is commonly called by BTS though BTS stands for Bangkok Train Station; the station, not the train itself.

It consists of two lines: Sukhumvit line and Silom line. Both lines has the intersection at Siam station.

It offers many advantages for tourists like me:
1. Easy to access
As long as you stay at a hotel nearby one of the stations, you can reach the station easily by walk.

2. Cheap
For a 'one day pass' which you can go to every stations on both lines, you only pay THB 120 (=USD 4). That's perfect for you to do a city tour. In case, you stay more than a week, you should consider other kind of passes that may be cheaper that the one day pass I mention here.

3. Comfortable
It's quick (compare to travelling by road in Bangkok), airconditioned, clean, safe and has a frequent schedule; every 5 minutes or even less during rush hours.

Weaknesses:
1. Limited line.
It doesn't connect to the airport. Although, I heard they plan to build it in the near future and when I was there I could see the pillars were already built along the way to the airport, still the political issues that rises recently in Thailand makes it harder to execute this plan.

It does not go to some very famous tourism. destinations in Bangkok either, such as Grand Palace, Wat Pho, and Dhusit Palace.

2. No facility for disable or elder people.
I face this problem when I see my parents have a hard time climbing through all the stairs to go to the station. Imagine, if you bring someone with a wheelchair, it is impossible to ride this train. Some of the stations has one elevator. Frankly speaking, it only goes up but it does not have one to go down. Also, the elevator is sometimes only located on the other side of the road which we can not across the road to access it since there is a fence along that road.

3. The ticket has no compound price with any other public transportations such as MRT or boats.
Eventhough people always use combination of those three (using sky train, MRT, and boat across Chao Phraya river) to get to a tourism place, there is no coordination between them.

Overall, it is still a big help using this sky train during our travelling in Bangkok, compares to other means of public transportation available there.