🌧️ Happy August! The city council passed a rule Friday requiring all meetings be livestreamed. A People’s Party Bangkok councilor admitted to voting with his absent colleague’s machine, prompting a call for disciplinary and legal action.

🚨 Thai PBS World retracted its report identifying a homeless man in Ploen Chit as a former Philippine Airlines pilot. The claim — from an unverified Facebook post — spread through news outlets before the airline debunked it.

The Thailand Consumer Council named 50 Bangkok condos it says still don’t meet basic fire safety rules, like a 6-meter fire truck setback for buildings taller than 23 meters or eight floors.

Why it matters: The TCC flagged these buildings to City Hall last October, after a Pinklao fire killed a doctor, and called for inspections. But the buildings still aren’t compliant, the group said.

🔎 Is your condo on the list? Check here (English).

A new study finds Bangkok’s crosswalk signal timers are too short for residents over 60, often trapping them mid-intersection.

Why it matters: Nearly 25% of Bangkok’s population is older than 60. The city also accounts for roughly a third of the country’s pedestrian crossing accidents.

By the numbers: Researchers tracked 227 older pedestrians at six hospital-area crossings. Their average walking speed was 1.15 meters per second, but the crossings themselves were designed for speeds between 0.80 and 1.73 meters per second.

Between the lines: Bangkok relies on blanket 15- to 20-second crossing windows, ignoring street widths and local pedestrian demographics, according to the study.

What’s next: Researchers proposed a model that calculates crossing times, ranging from 13 to 26 seconds, based on the share of older pedestrians using each site.

Zooming out: The findings landed as city councilors renewed a push for a crosswalk overhaul Friday. Members raised recurring complaints — faded paint, missing push buttons, blocked sightlines and inconsistent timers.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this item, published Aug. 1 in Soi Blueprint, misstated the average walking speed as the study’s 15th-percentile figure. The error has been corrected.

BTS has agreed to convert its Rabbit card into an EMV-compatible one, as part of the government’s push toward a single fare and ticketing system by Jan. 1, 2027.

Why it matters: A July House Transport Committee meeting flagged upgrading BTS’s roughly 1,000 fare gates as one of the biggest hurdles to hitting that deadline — a fix BTS said will cost over 900 million baht and take about two years.

Yes, but… The new Rabbit EMV card will work across both BTS and MRT lines, but other banks’ EMV cards still won’t work at BTS gates, a lawmaker on the committee said.

State of play: On the Yellow and Pink lines, EMV cards only work at separate readers next to the ticket booths, a bottleneck that caps throughput at 30 riders a minute, versus 700-1,200 passengers every 15 minutes at Siam and Asok.

Zooming out: Every line except Green and Gold now accepts EMV cards. On the Blue and Purple lines, which switched in June, more than 55% of riders have already made the move.

An electric boat group warns that the government’s plan for school and taxi boats on Khlong Phasi Charoen could be too slow to be useful and could threaten existing operators.

Why it matters: The Transport Ministry’s programs aim to ease rush-hour congestion on narrow roads by offering a canal alternative, serving 14 schools and tourist attractions like Wat Paknam and Bang Luang Floating Market.

State of play: The group recommends a max speed of 10 kilometers per hour, citing wake-damage risk in a 20-meter-wide canal.

Zooming in: For the tourist taxi boats, it says government-run boats shouldn’t compete with private operators already working the canal and calls any subsidy an “unnecessary burden on taxpayers.”

What’s next: The group wants the city to fix low bridges, sagging cables and connecting canals. It’s also urging the government to ease battery-certification rules that it says make small-boat conversions nearly impossible.

The Department of Land Transport opened public hearings for a month on a draft principle — an early step before a formal rule — to ban gas-powered tuk-tuks from inner Bangkok, allowing only electric models.

Why it matters: The draft cites a need for tighter noise and air-pollution control in an area home to the Grand Palace, royal temples and other national monuments.

Yes, but… DLT officials have pushed back on framing this as a settled plan, calling reports describing it as a certain future ban “immature.”

By the numbers: Bangkok has 8,582 registered gas-powered tuk-tuks, according to the DLT. Nationwide, there are only 1,056 EV tuk-tuks, according to the EV Association of Thailand.

❤️ Want to support Soiciety? Become a Soi Resident today.

📧 Reach me at [email protected].