First, there's the trek. He has to pass a busy street and then a large and empty space under the Airport Link station, which is partly surrounded by a dark, vacant lot.

And once he's reached his destination, he has to dig around for change to pay for yet another fare.

Since its launch in August, the Airport Link, the elevated rail service which connects Suvarnabhumi Airport to inner Bangkok, has made life more convenient not just for the flight-bound, but also for regular city commuters like Mr Anand. But commuters told the Bangkok Post the service fails them when it comes to linking to the city's two other mass transport rail systems - the BTS Skytrain and the the MRTA underground.

They said the lack of joint ticketing forces them to pay two or three times if they need to transfer between systems. This has long been the case with the BTS and MRT.

The lack of proper links between the systems is due to a lack of preparation and coordination among the three bodies running the systems, said Padet Praditphet, a senior officer at the Office of Transport and Traffic Policy and Planning (OTP) which is in charge of planning the transport services.

When developing the systems, the operators neither planned nor agreed on how they would link up their services, said Mr Padet.

"Each operator planned its own service independently," he said.

A joint ticketing system has been promised several times by politicians. In early 2007, then Bangkok governor Apirak Kosayodhin said it would be finished by the end of that year. But it did not happen.

Earlier this year, Transport Minister Sohpon Zarum delivered the same promise.

However, Mr Padet, who is leading the development of a joint ticketing system, said only the MRT and the Airport Link are likely to be linked and that won't happen for a few years. "The joint ticketing system is likely to be complete by the year 2014 upon the completion of the MRT's new purple line," he said.

Once completed, the joint ticketing system would allow MRT and Airport Link passengers to connect between the two systems without having to pay a new start-up ticket price, which would reduce overall fares significantly.

The MRT and Airport Link are state-run, however the BTS is operated by a private body and is holding out on taking part in the new system.

Mr Padet said his team would require at least one year to write software to integrate the ticket structures, and additional time for implementation and trials.

A proposal for the system has been submitted to the Transport Ministry, he said, but the cabinet will have a final say on whether the scheme will go forward.

Source: Bangkok Post

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