Lovely to have good news to report. And this must be good news for one contractor.
The car park at Chiang Mai Railway Station, hopefully to be renamed the Chiang Mai International Railway Station in honour of the foreign tourists who greatly outnumber local folk on the night sleeper trains, has been upgraded.
A new toll box has been constructed, complete with an electrically operated boom gate (see picture). Also steel shades for motor vehicles, with heavy concrete blocks to hold them down, have been erected.
The other good railway news is that the high speed railway link from Bangkok to Chiang Mai has been abandoned. This project to a small rural city from a great metropolis could never have been economically viable, unless of course half Bangkok decided to move here to avoid floods as the sea level rises. Surely to better to move to Korat where conversation with the locals will be so much easier after the October floods there.
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For more on the railways see www.mychiangmai.com
Have you heard about 10:10:10 – a project to ask folk to promise to reduce their carbon emissions by 10% every year for 10 years starting in ’10 ?
Well folk who sign up indicate which actions they will commit to e.g ride a bike, plant trees etc.
The Mayor signed up in October ( he has no bike ) and last week the new governor of the province was given a form to fill in as he rushed away from a meeting he opened to the airport to meet some VIP.
Considering how he complained about the frequency of this duty it is just possible he signed up to the pledge to use the train instead of flying to and from Bangkok.
Let us hope not, for we did not have time to warn that the Monday train due to arrive at 9:45 arrived after 15:00 ie over 5 hours late. The week before my train arrived at 12:10 and again today at Chiang Mai station the same service rolled in at 12:10.
If he should take the train and suffer the same delay as seems to have become the norm, he may well decide to bar access to Chiang Mai folk who advocate a sustainable future for our province.