A new terminal for vans and minibuses will be officially launched near the Morchit 2 terminal next month.
Jirasak Yaowatchasakul, managing director of the Land Transport Company, said on Monday that the new building would be officially opened on August 1.
The terminal, which aims to reduce passenger overcrowding, has been built on a 33-rai plot of land under the Sirat Expressway on the opposite side of the road from the terminal.
The first phase of the project has been completed, with the new terminal able to handle 4,500 trips ¬- or 30,000 passengers – per day.
The Transport Compnay is also developing an online booking service to allow passengers to buy tickets up to three months in advance.
Jirasak said service operators had already started relocating their vehicles to the new terminal over the last month and he advised that in the initial stages passengers would suffer some inconvenience, including inadequate or hard-to-access toilet facilities at the new building.
Jirasak said the operators were gradually swapping their vans for minibuses to offer a safer alternative.
So far, there are about 4,700 interprovincial vans under concession from the Transport Company, 600 of which have been used for 10 years and will be decommissioned and turned into microbuses this year.
In 2021, 2,200 of them will have been replaced by minibuses, Jirasak added.
