Bangkok’s New Road Paves the Way to Greater Inequality
Here’s the uncomfortable truth about infrastructure: it’s never just about concrete and asphalt. It’s a Rorschach test for societal values, a ledger of who we prioritize and who we leave behind. The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration’s (BMA) announcement of a new 2-kilometre road to ease congestion around Don Mueang Airport isn’t simply a story of traffic relief. It’s a perfect encapsulation of a much larger, more insidious dynamic: How cities, often unwittingly, pave their way to greater inequality.
Deputy Bangkok Governor Wisanu Subsompon put it plainly: “This route will allow vehicles to bypass traffic signals on Phahon Yothin Road, improving flow significantly.” But improved flow for whom, and at whose expense? While the BMA sprinkles in mentions of better east-west connectivity and integration with major expressways, the primary beneficiary is glaringly obvious: the automobile. The promised cycle lanes are, at best, aspirational. At worst, they’re greenwashing for a transportation policy clinging desperately to the past.
Zoom out, and this becomes a depressingly familiar pattern, a sort of urban planning Stockholm Syndrome. Bangkok, like so many cities in the developing world (and, let’s be honest, much of the developed world too), faces an existential congestion crisis. But this crisis isn’t a random act of fate. It’s the direct result of decades of choices: unchecked urban sprawl fueled by a societal addiction to personal vehicles, further cemented by infrastructure investments that reward, rather than reshape, these very patterns.
The city’s reflex is to build more roads to accommodate the ever-expanding legions of cars. This, despite the overwhelming evidence of induced demand. As the transportation economist Anthony Downs argued decades ago, and countless studies have since confirmed, increasing road capacity only induces more demand, like pouring gasoline on a fire you’re trying to extinguish. More roads mean more people are incentivized to drive, exacerbating the very problem the new infrastructure aimed to solve.
This isn’t a new realization. In 1961, Jane Jacobs skewered the urban renewal projects of her day, decrying the “simplistic fallacy” that wider roads and more parking would revitalize cities. “Dismal science,” she called it, but a science practiced nonetheless, at great cost.
This dynamic also extends to the subtle ways cities allocate resources. Urban planner Brent Toderian likes to ask: “Are we building a city for the people who live here, or for the cars that pass through?” The answer, as this Bangkok road makes clear, often defaults to the latter. Public transit, with its potential to redistribute access and opportunity, remains perpetually underfunded, under-appreciated, and ultimately, less politically expedient than appeasing drivers. These investments overwhelmingly benefit populations with socioeconomic advantages.
The opening of a new road may register as a short-term “win” in some quarters, but the long-term costs are conveniently hidden. Increased air pollution, exacerbated urban sprawl, a reinforced dependence on fossil fuels — these are the opportunity costs that rarely make it into the press releases. This decision serves as a signal, a declaration of Bangkok’s urban identity. And it portrays a vision where short-term convenience for the few trumps long-term sustainability for the many. The question remains: is that the kind of city worth building, and more importantly, the kind worth inheriting?
