International Development Thailand has successfully reached the upper middle-income country triggered by rapid economic growth since the late 1980s. For further development, Thailand has been considering ways to realize the sustainable society taking account of global issues such as climate change and energy security. In the 11th National Economic and Social Development Plan, sustainable urban development is pointed out as one of the urgent issues. The practical strategies, however, had not been discussed. Many regional cities in Thailand have a small population, less than 100,000, and face serious issues such as lack of basic infrastructure, improvement of the living environment, industrial development/ job creation, and aging of society. Nevertheless, the local governments are in difficulty preparing and implementing the Local Strategic Development Plan which could solve the issues above due to the lack of authorization, budget, and human resources.
Under such circumstances, the projects have been carried out with the aims of developing the concept of future city development, a proposal of implementation mechanism and measures of future city development, and enhancement of sustainable city development.
The project consists of the following five main stages:
1) Policy research of future city development in Thailand,
2) Preparation of development plans in the model cities,
3) Development and dissemination of urban planning and implementation guideline for regional cities in Thailand
4) Implementation of the Sustainable Future City Initiative Phase 2
5) Development and dissemination of a sustainable city concept in Thailand
In Phnom Penh, due to recent economic development, the number of registered vehicles increased rapidly. As a result, traffic congestion is becoming more severe, and traffic accidents also continue to increase, indicating that the city needs drastic action to implement traffic improvement measures. As part of the public transport system proposed in the 2014 Comprehensive Urban Transport Plan, the introduction of the bus transport system was considered as the highest priority project to ease the traffic congestion.
The GOJ, through the Japanese Grant Aid scheme, was to provide bus fleets to Phnom Penh Capital Administration (PPCA) and City Bus Authority (CBA), to be utilized for expansion of the bus routes. However, CBA is still a new organization, established in 2014, with a fragile organization structure and delivers a low service level of bus operation in terms of travel speed and time schedule. Bus operation and management capacity, particularly in CBA, needs to be improved to ensure proper operation and management of the bus fleets procured under the Japanese Grant Aid scheme. Therefore, GOC requested GOJ to implement technical assistance through this project in line with the said grant aid project.
1.Improvement of Bus operation capacity of CBA
2.Improvement of maintenance and inspection capacity on bus fleets of CBA
3.Establishment of training system of bus drivers and conductors, drivers’ management system for safe driving and labor management system in CBA
4.Improvement of CBA’s business management capacity
5.Improvement of capacity of CBA and Department of Public Works and Transport (DPWT)/PPCA on policy planning for the public transport priority measures
