Motorcycle Taxis

Motorcycle Taxi (Circa 2016):

Number: + 200,000 vehicles

Cost: 10 baht/person minimum

Horsepower: 8 to 9 HP

Coverage: 4 million people/day

Operation Time: 5:30 am – 9 pm (24 hours in some areas)

(Photo Credit: drburtoni, Creative Common, Flickr)

The iconic orange-vested motorcycle taxis is equally ubiquitous in the streets of Bangkok.

“For a moment, I was literally airborne!” laughs a young American filmmaker after his motorcycle collided with a large pothole. “Thanks to physics, I landed right back in my seat and not in the street.”

The number queue arrangement at the motorcycle taxis booth evolved to prevent arguments over who will get the passenger first. Once the driver comes back to the booth, he positioned the number at the end of the queue. Street carts and food tends to gather around the passenger waiting area.

How it Works

The motorcycle taxis collectively acted like a swarm of BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) system -- with it's own traffic-free lane.

A motorcycle taxi tends to gain advantage over a car when the length of traffic jam starts to get longer. (See the diagram above)

Example 1: Assumed that the traffic block is extremely short -- equal to the car’s length. Both the motorcycle and the car face a 2 minutes red light, one after another consecutively until they both reach the destination at bottom.

In this case, it follows that both the car and the motorcycle will arrive at the same time. There’s no time advantage for the motorcycle taxi.

Example 2: Assumed that the traffic block is longer. The motorcycle taxi could now zig zag through the traffic jam and arrive at the destination much earlier than the car.

Example 3: Assumed that the traffic block in even longer. The time advantage for the motorcycle taxi is now even more apparent.

The phenomenon could be expressed as:

Sd = Vm(Tj)

Where Sd = The distance between the car and the motorcycle

Vm = The average speed through traffic of the motorcycle taxi from start to finish point

Tj = The duration of traffic jam or traffic light

L = Traffic block length

Note: The Sd cannot exceed a given traffic block length (L) at the Red Light

This means that the motorcycle taxis will be waiting in front of the traffic jam block until the traffic starts to flow again.

In Bangkok, the city has large super block with length much longer than in many other cities; it's not uncommon to have a block length between two intersection of over 1 km long. This is because the city streets followed the pattern of ancient canal transit "tree" branches which is not a grid-pattern streets.