Thailand's passenger buses to be soon installed GPS

BANGKOK, November 26 (TNA) - The Thai Ministry of Transport's Department of Land Transport plans to install the Global Positioning System (GPS) on over 800 inter-provincial buses run by the government-owned Transport Company Limited, beginning from January 1, 2013. The department's director-general, Somchai Siriwattanachoke, told journalists Monday that the plan is aimed to increase security of passengers, as the advance GPS allows authorities to track the company's inter-provincial buses via satellites, as well as to control the speeds of the buses and their drivers to keep them following the laws for public safety. Somchai said that the GPS installation on all the government-owned inter-provincial buses will be gradually carried out throughout next year, after which private-run inter-provincial buses and vans will also be legally required to be equipped with the GPS in due courses. According to the senior official, his department will invest around 30 million baht for the project, which will be later expanded to cover 3,000 newly-acquired passenger buses in metropolitan areas of the state-run Bangkok Mass Transit Authority (BMTA), after it is approved by the Cabinet. The senior official noted that private passenger vans have first been required to install the Radio Frequency Identification or RFID tag, under which their speeds on express ways, motorways and tollways are monitored by authorities concerned, resulting in a remarkable plunge of their accidents on the express routes to almost zero so far. (TNA)