I am about to start an assignment in Bangkok amongst which there will be a contribution to these projects and I can assure you that they will all be built elevated as per the ARL.hhinner wrote:I think Usual Suspect is spot on with this. The track will have to be fenced all the way, with occasional stations and crossing points. We've all seen how people on foot and on bikes won't go to the next u-turn or bridge on a major road, preferring to have make shift bridges over central drainage ditches and running across traffic lanes. That sort of thing can't be allowed with high speed rail tracks. Yet how many crossings, official and ad hoc, are there just between Hua Hin and Cha-Am (or even only in Hua Hin)? Scale that up the full length of the railway and there are big problems looming when localities are split by this track. How many people are going to get Darwin Awards before everybody accepts that the only way over the track is the long way round? Maybe the only way is to build this on embankments or elevated concrete viaducts with crossings everywhere? That'll take longer than just using graders and rollers.usual suspect wrote:So we're about to get this high-speed rail-link huh?
One post did mention the mess & disruption to traffic around the station-area while they did work there..OK, what about all the 100's of Kms that will get bulldozed, homes flattened, businesses closed, roads closed, rail-crossings shut, then within a few weeks a great orange strip will be produced care of 1000's & 1000's of over-laden 6-wheel trucks & umpteen rollers + graders..just same as when a new road is laid...
THEN NOTHING HAPPENS FOR ABOUT A YEAR!.. we'll get this barren strip of 'no-man's land all the way down from BKK, Chinese 'dozers will now have tracked their way past Hat-Yai, & the team laying the actual rails will have forged ahead all the way to the Chao-Praya river-crossing!!.. about 2 years behind the 'dozers & graders..T.I.T..we've all seen how it works.
Then what about the new roads here?..after 6 months they're all riddled with pot-holes 'cos of contractors skimping on materials & 'earning' kick-backs from this..will similar problems rise to the surface within months with this railway??
(Seems ALL the letters on this topic seem to be of a negative nature)
What about land acquisition. Even if it's built on existing SRT land I'll bet there are a lot of "tenants" who'll fight eviction. Just getting the land could take years, a la Hopewell in Bangkok.
You simply cannot have high speed trains running at grade (at ground level) in this part of the world. No amount of fencing or crossings could be tolerated.
The elevated concrete structure alone, will take considerably longer to build than the farcical opening date(s) stated in the press.