Makkasan Station is a station on the Airport Rail Link (ARL) connecting central Bangkok to Suvarnabhumi Airport. It’s a grand station from the outside, but on the inside it’s a ghost town. [City Air Terminal at Makkasan Station, now off-limits to passengers.] The station was built with check-in counters for flights, so you could check-in […]
Editorial
How to fix KL Sentral: ideas to fix the worst station in Southeast Asia
Kuala Lumpur Sentral Station is going to be redeveloped at the end of 2024. Here are some ideas to improve the station. KL Sentral opened in 2001, replacing Kuala Lumpur Station as the central station. KL Sentral was designed to handle 100,000 commuters a day, but it’s now handling 200,000 commuters per day. After over […]
Nonthaburi Civic Center: A missed opportunity to build a great transit hub
Nonthaburi Civic Center station is a Bangkok MRT station on the Purple Line, Pink Line, and the future Brown Line. Unfortunately for Bangkok, the station doesn’t provide an integrated transfer between lines. The urban rail transit system of Bangkok has been expanding at an impressive rate over the last decade. New lines have been added […]
How to make Johor Bahru an international metropolis of Southeast Asia
How a transit system, walkable cities, and more interesting buildings could make Johor Bahru the Shenzhen of Southeast Asia. Johor Bahru has been described as the next Shenzhen due to its proximity to Singapore. Shenzhen became an economic powerhouse by becoming a special economic zone (SEZ) and building a new city in the slipstream of […]
The bad urban design of Cyberjaya: Malaysia’s ‘failed Silicon Valley’
How bad urban design set Cyberjaya up for failure Cyberjaya is a city in Selangor state, about halfway between Kuala Lumpur and Kuala Lumpur International Airport. This is a great place to build a new city. A real estate agent would put “strategic location” in their sales blurb, and on paper it is. Unfortunately Malaysia […]
Cambodia should rebuild the railway instead of building a canal
The Funan Techo Canal plans to connect Phnom Penh to a seaport in Kampot, but a railway would be quicker and a better allocation of resources. [Railway at Kampot, Cambodia.] Cambodia is studying a proposal to build a waterway and canal system to connect Phnom Penh to Kampot Province via the Bassac River. The 180 […]
The bad urban design of Forest City: Malaysia’s futuristic city making the same mistakes as its old cities
Forest City is an artificial island project in Malaysia, located in the Johor strait opposite Singapore. It was supposed to be a futuristic green city, but it’s already making the same mistakes of the badly-planned cities of Malaysia. Forest City is car-centric and not built with pedestrians or cyclists in mind. It also looks like […]
The ticketing mess of Bangkok’s rail transit
The rail transit system of Bangkok is operated by three separate companies, and each company issues tickets that are only valid for their own line. I’ve previously covered the station transfer mess of Bangkok’s rail transit. This article covers the ticketing mess of Bangkok’s rail transit. The ticketing mess The mass transit system of Bangkok […]
The station transfer mess of Bangkok’s rail transit
Bangkok is working towards building an urban rail transit system that will meet the needs of the people of this megacity. There are now 8 lines that make up the metro system, with 3 lines under construction, and more lines planned. Unfortunately for Bangkok, the system currently has three operators that are not compelled to […]
Improving the interchanges and connections of the KL metro transit system
Kuala Lumpur has slowly and steadily been building out an urban rail transit system that it hopes will reduce the city’s car addiction. Mistakes were made early on with integrating the lines, but there have been some great improvements in recent years. In fact, KL has examples of the best and worst ways to make […]
