Phitsanulok trip report

The provincial city with a preposterous plan for a 5-line mass transit system, and how the proposed high-speed rail to Chiang Mai could transform its fortunes.

Phitsanulok is a city in Central Thailand (or Lower Northern Thailand, depending on how you define regions). It has the distinction of being a crossroads city, with major North-South and East-West highways passing through it. It almost became a major railway hub as well, which I will cover in this article.

My interest in Phitsanulok was piqued by a proposed people mover. The proposal is for an Auto Tram System, which is basically a tram with rubber wheels (or is it a bus that looks like a tram?) There are several cities in Thailand that are proposing urban transit systems, but Bangkok is still the only city with a transit system of some kind.

I am chronicling every proposed transit system in Southeast Asia, and I have made a fact sheet for the Phitsanulok Auto Tram System.

The official website calls it the Phitsanulok Mass Transit Project. Labelling anything as Mass in a city of 62,000 people seems like a bit of a stretch, so I had to go to Phitsanulok for myself to get a feel for the city and see if it needs a mass transit system.

I have been to Phitsanulok before, but I was in travel mode and on the way to see the nearby historic ruins of Sukhothai. This was my first visit to see the city through the lens of urbanism.

Phitsanulok is roughly midway between Bangkok and Chiang Mai on the Northern Line, and it takes around 4 hours to travel the 383 km. This is on flat terrain, and it’s the fastest section of the Northern Line. I got the train to Phitsanulok, and after my visit, I continued by train to Chiang Mai. I wanted to see what the fastest train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai is like. Spoiler alert: it’s slow, and there is no way it can compete with flying.

Phitsanulok also has an airport with flights to Don Muang Airport in Bangkok. I was sitting next to a student who was going back home for a visit, and he said he usually flies, but he was trying out the train for a change. If students are electing to fly, then it shows how inefficient the railway is.

There is a plan to build a high-speed railway to Chiang Mai, which could reduce the travel time to Phitsanulok to 90 minutes. Here are some images of what the Phitsanulok Station might look like on this new line.

The current station is in the city centre, and the proposed new station would be in the same location.

Phitsanulok was originally going to be a stop on the East-West Economic Corridor Railway. This line will connect Yangon to Danang, via Thailand and Laos. That would have turned Phitsanulok into a major crossroads of the Greater Mekong Subregion. As it turns out, the route would have involved cutting through a national park, so the line has been rerouted to Nakhon Sawan to the south of Phitsanulok.

It would have been nice to see a new station with a departure board showing international destinations, but the high-speed railway will be enough to change the fortunes of the city.

I was interested to see how the transit system would look here, so I went to the main road where the tram would operate. There are 5 lines proposed in total, with the first line following National Highway 12 (the East-West Economic Corridor Highway). This is a wide road that easily has 2 lanes to spare for use as a transit system, so there would be a minimal amount of land to acquire.

The proposed line crosses the railway line at Topland Plaza. One of the maps I found shows another line along the same North-South route of the current railway. If the high-speed railway is built through the city, it will most likely be elevated. That means they could repurpose the old metre-gauge railway at the ground level for a regional transit railway.

I have been travelling to the cities of Thailand that are proposing urban railways. I visited Khon Kaen last year, which has some similarities to Phitsanulok. Khon Kaen is also a crossroads city, with a North-South Highway to Laos, and the same East-West Highway that goes through Phitsanulok. Also like Phitsanulok, Khon Kaen was going to be part of the East-West Economic Corridor Railway until it was rerouted south. That section is now under construction at Ban Phai.

Khon Kaen has a population of about 115,000, and they are planning their own tram/light rail system.

The thing I noticed about Khon Kaen (apart from being twice the size of Phitsanulok) is that there was a lot more building going on. There are now apartment towers from the same builders that you see in Bangkok. I saw none of this in Phitsanulok. It might be that Khon Kaen is having a building boom because the high-speed railway is now being built. If the high-speed railway to Chiang Mai is approved, I suspect that the apartment builders from Bangkok will be in Phitsanulok as well.

Phitsanulok looks like every other provincial city in Thailand. If you have travelled around Thailand, then you know the look. The city is filled with drab and unremarkable concrete shophouses. I didn’t see any new buildings, or at least anything that stood out as new.

Another thing that I noticed after walking the highway along the tram route is the lack of trees. This got me thinking about how to improve Phitsanulok. There are so many ugly old buildings, but there is not enough money to rebuild the city. It would be better to start planting trees all over the city. Turn side streets like this into one-way lanes and make pleasant walking areas. Over time, the buildings on these streets become valuable enough to renovate or rebuild. Even something simple like turning every fourth car park into a tree box would improve a street like this.

There are a few old hotels with striking modernist designs that have closed down. It would be great if they could be refurbished with the original exterior kept intact.

I think Phitsanulok could do the green project because it already feels like there is civic pride in the city. The city sits on the banks of the Nan River, where there are some pleasant walkways. I was impressed with how clean the riverbanks are, with no visible rubbish and well-kept grass.

The largest redevelopment project happening at the moment in the city is along the river. I went to the riverside night bazaar, and the old concrete blocks that blocked the river have now been demolished. Another section of the riverfront was blocked off to traffic while they were rebuilding the walkway. Another section I walked on had a new walking and cycling path.

Urban transit systems in Thailand have been proposed in Chiang Mai, Phuket, Hat Yai, Khon Kaen, Nakhon Ratchasima, and Pattaya. I would have considered the Phitsanulok proposal as the least likely to happen, but if it only involves repurposing two lanes on a national highway, then it might have a chance of happening.

As for which city in Thailand will be the first outside Bangkok to get an urban transit line, there is no clear frontrunner yet. I wish it were Chiang Mai, but it would most likely be Phuket or Khon Kaen as a long shot.