A solution of traffic congestion for ko chang piers through applying access fee

Abstract

Ko Chang, one of the main island attractions of Thailand, is suffering from congestion at its ferry piers due to the great flocks of tourists. Due to the low vehicle-carrying capacity of the ferry, the bottlenecks are observed especially over long weekends. Over volume of private cars that are cause of negative impact to tourist destination is overtourism phenomenon. The problem could be alleviated if the tourists could be encouraged to park their cars at the main land piers and walk on to the ferry. This study aims to find out the Thai tourist mode choice preference and develops a binary logit model with its objective to alleviate the congestion via the demand management strategies. The results show that the monetary cost and wait time in the queue are the primary and secondary factors affecting the tourist’s decision. It is also shown that almost half of the tourists would leave their cars on the mainland if 500-baht charge is applied with the 3 hour wait.