If you ever find yourself somewhere in Bangkok you will almost certainly get at least a bit annoyed about how the footpaths / sidewalks are nearly unusable because they are either too narrow or they have been turned into motorbike parking lots or places where people set up mostly illegal stalls to sell anything you can imagine.
When I walk around in that city I find myself regularly needing to walk in the street because it doesn't matter how wide they make the sidewalk, if the actual citizens don't adhere to some sort of rules as far as the use of the footpaths are concerned.
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I hate to be a party pooper because I know there are a lot of people that enjoy having access to these stalls on the street but when they sometimes completely block the ability for a person to simply walk down the path to get to some sort of destination it is very frustrating.
Another problem that exists when the footpath clearing is actually enforced and adhered to is that motorbikes will use this as an alternate road whenever traffic is bad. So now we have another danger introduced.
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You can put up all the signs you want about how you will be fined if you drive your motorbike up there but if nobody ever enforces it, what is the point?
In other places such as Khao Sahn Road, which I haven't been to in years and likely will never go to again because it is basically overrun, they ran out of sidewalk for the vendors and now they have moved to occupying half of the damn street as well.
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The last I heard, taxis will not even attempt to go down this road because they wont be able to move. It is, once again, completely illegal for these vendors to be set up here but there is likely a payment system going to the police officers (there's a police station right on the corner of this road) for the cops to look the other way.
But when I read this news about how the city plans to upgrade 1000km of sidewalks in Bangkok the first thing that came to my mind was that all this would accomplish would be to make new tarmac for the motorbikes and street sellers.
In the above article they officials in charge of this say that the street vendors would be reorganized into designated spaces but man, who are these people kidding. When the vendors leave because they are forced to it will be a month of peace and then the police themselves will set out to "sell" the rights to put their stalls on the new and improved footpaths.
Until some level of enforcement is put into place it really doesn't matter how much money you throw at this issue. The congestion and the fact that the vendors always end up occupying this space along with unofficial motorbike parking lots is going to ruin it.
I guess it is better than doing nothing but I can't help but feel like this is an opportunity for some public official to benefit themselves with the press they are getting rather than actually being concerned about fixing any of it. When I see these nicely dressed politicians addressing the public on the sidewalks, I can't help but imagine that this is the first time they have ever stood there and their Mercedes is waiting for them just around the corner.