The Motorcycle Taxi System in Bangkok
In this chapter, I would like to introduce the motorcycle taxi, famous and indispensable transportation in Bangkok. Its occurrence emerged from the complex layers of the city as a palimpsest. Since the early 18th century, motorcycle taxis have been introduced in Bangkok. Its narrative starts from a smallnarrow alley or "Soi" (in Thai) in the navy community in the city; a navy officer offers a ride to send other residents in Soi to the main road or a nearby destination to interchange to other transports or do their businesses for free. Subsequently, this practice became more famous, and then it became a new source of income. In the present, it is an indispensable transport of the city; the motorcycle taxi spots, called "Win" in Thai, derived from the idea of first come, first served, in this sense, first come, first serviced, are embedded everywhere in the city especially around the mass transit stations and the intersection of street and Soi. It offers a short distance and cut-through traffic delivery with a lower price than a taxi but still higher than other mass transits which are unable for service in Soi and many inside
the urban block of the city. This kind of informal practice has been operated to fulfil the gap that the government or the big corporates cannot provide. In Claudio Sopranzetti's work; The Owner of the Map: motorcycle taxi drivers, mobility, and politic in Bangkok (2013), he defines “the four causes of possibility for the appearances of the motorcycle taxis” by reconstructing the complex condition in social, economic, political, and material landscape of Thai capital: 1. A physical setting of a long-narrow Soi. 2. The affordable and available aspects of a motorcycle at the time. 3. The migration of labours from rural areas. 4. A social relation between the state official and the local underclass dwellers or new migrants. In this discussion, I will focus on the two initial conditions.
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