Talking Point – Trains
Posted By Webmaster on November 9, 2009
One of the business English course books we regularly use at English Click contains a delightful unit on holding a meeting with ‘solving city traffic problems’ as its agenda. Without exception, this topic creates extensive and stimulating discussion among our students about the most effective ways to reduce the long delays and high levels of pollution caused by the heavy volume of traffic in Bangkok.
The page in the course book couldn’t be better, as it relates directly to the daily experience of everybody in the classroom: a vivid colour photograph of a Bangkok traffic jam and the statement: ‘The traffic in Bangkok is so bad that around 300 babies are born in cars on their way to the hospital each year. Many traffic police take a course in midwifery (delivery of babies nursing)!’
As it happened, the last time I taught this particular unit, one of my students was at a very advanced stage of pregnancy and we all shared a laugh at the possibility of our mother-to-be giving birth to her baby in her car while driving back home after the lesson!
On a more serious note, students invariably believe that the best way to reduce Bangkok’s traffic congestion and improve the environment is for the city to have an extensive network of BTS and MRT lines covering all districts, similar to many other large cities around the world. Disappointment is also expressed about the very long time that any extension – for example the two additional BTS stations after On Nut on the Sukhumvit line – or the development of completely new lines actually takes to become a reality here.
In other lessons when the general topic is transportation, our students often wish for an investment in faster inter-city train links which would be a more environmentally friendly, comfortable and safer method of travel than by road. Our text books display beautiful pictures of the latest passenger train technology such as the high speed trains of France and the bullet trains of Japan – imagine zipping from Bangkok to Chiang Mai in just a couple of hours in one of these amazing machines!
To end on a postive note: we eagerly await the start of regular services on the new Airport Link trains that are due to enter their final test runs in December – undoubtedly a move in the right direction to make the air we breathe cleaner!