Planet Phuket News Analysis
IT WAS a promising week for Planet Phuket. For the first time, authorities on Phuket (and in Bangkok) began to seriously consider and discuss the island's public transport needs.
Talks are being held now about tuk-tuks and airport taxis, which is good. Yet it's as if, somehow, the two are separate problems.
In fact, they are clearly related and need to be looked at that way, in the big picture. The needs of the whole of Phuket are paramount. The whole island needs to be in the picture.
Minor improvements to public transport are on the way in ''Phuket Town.'' A few more pink seung taew buses will soon be brought into service there, which is particularly good news for local schoolchildren.
Tuk-tuks, airport taxis, pink buses in so-called ''Phuket Town'' . . . each issue is still being treated separately, and administered separately.
One of these days, the one-baht coin might drop. ''Phuket Town'' actually officially became Phuket City several years ago, when the population grew beyond 70,000 citizens.
And these days, the entire island of Phuket is a conurbation (''a predominantly urban region including adjacent towns and suburbs; a metropolitan area'') of one million-plus people.
Phuket's villages are sprawling and merging. These days, some tourists even refer to the whole island as being a ''city.'' They see nothing but shops and houses.
Those who continue to refer to Phuket City as ''Phuket Town'' are clearly living in the past or longing for the past, a time when towns and villages each dealt with their own problems, and their own transport issues.
Let Planet Phuket put it this way: Until the governing authorities and the tuk-tuk drivers and the taxi drivers and the island's media start treating Phuket as a 21st century conurbation, not as separate villages or towns, no solutions can possibly be found to the island's public transport needs.
Like the overseers of the island's tuk-tuks, who prefer to have Phuket continue to be run along traditional village lines, those who refer to Phuket City as ''Phuket Town'' are destined to live in the past. They will think small forever.
The flaws in that kind of thinking are painfully obvious. As Patong's police chief has pointed out, the tuk-tuk system is failing because traditional village rivalries mean that customers have to be charged a return fare, even though the passengers are only going one way
The customer pays for the tuk-tuk to return empty to the ''village''. In the efficient, transparent 21st century, there is just one term for that: a rip-off.
And the same rules apply at the Phuket International Airport, which is prospering from a 21st century approach to air transport . . . and a 19th century approach to road transport.
Once passengers' feet touch the ground, it's as though the airport administrators no longer have to adhere to international standards.
The future of the overwhelmingly large numbers of drivers involved, both tuk-tuks and taxis, needs to be a prime consideration. They too have been conned, and they should be given every opportunity to make a fresh start.
But ''Old Phuket Town'' has clear boundaries. The folk who live there can tell you where the borders are. It's a great destination for tourists, but it's just one small, traditional area.
''Phuket Town'' should not be confused by forward-thinking people with Phuket City, or for that matter with Patong, Karon, Kata, or with the needs of all the tourists arriving at the airport . . . or with the future of the whole of Phuket, the modern conurbation.
Once the realities of the island and its needs are understood, change will come. It should, it must, and soon.
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Regardless of how Phuket Town is classified by the authorities, it is very obviously a town, not a city. And almost nobody, in conversation, talks about "Phuket City". And claiming anyone using the term "Phuket Town" is "living in the past" is absurd. Get a grip. Bizarre, unfocused article. No news today, I suppose?
Editor: What people talk about in conversation and the reality are two different things. As a small 'Town' thinker, perhaps you need to re-read the article. It was written for you.
Posted by Simon Smith on January 24, 2010 19:02