when a road renovation goes completely wrong - Krabi edition

I am not a big fan of government or corruption - which I think go hand-in-hand. I worked for several government agencies and saw waste and corruption that would most people would find depressing. When you get to a country like Thailand, the corruption is considerably easier to spot. It is basically right in the community's face and no one does anything about it because for the most part, it is on a low-level. However, a few years ago a road that needed to be widened due to the growing population and tourism in Krabi finally got the greenlight to be renovated, and wow... did they ever renovate the shit out of it.

It's called Na Thai road and it connects a highway of sorts with the beach areas of Ao Nang and Nopparat-Thara Beach. Previously it was 2 lanes, one going in each direction and was highly inadequate.

The problem happened when instead of just putting more lanes in, they unnecessarily put other stuff in that really serves no purpose given the area. They put in a massive sidewalk, a bike lane, and these rectangular garden boxes all the way down the 5 or so kilometers of this road.

these were meant to prevent cars and motorbikes from entering the bike lane, but I can assure you, both use the lane at will

The "bike lane was built wide enough for a car to fit in, and let me tell you something about Thailand - If a car fits in there... that is precisely what is going to be in it. So the bike lane was a parking lot and the government solution was to put these orange plastic cone things in and people just ran them over so they could park in front of their houses. In a western country, doing this would result in at least a massive fine, but here in Thailand, there are no repercussions at all.

Also, the "plant boxes" were always going to be neglected once the government official got his picture taken with the "look what i did!" photos for the papers and that is precisely what happened: Have you ever had ONE planter box? Ok, now imagine you have 400 of them and you don't give half a shit about any of them. This is precisely what is happening as all the boxes that are not near the entrances of this road are all but completely ignored.

To anyone that doesn't live here (and there are so many tourists that I can safely say this is at least 20% of the people who drive on this road) it is extremely confusing as to what the hell you are supposed to do here. Accidents are extremely common and this is based mostly on the fact that the planter boxes, it isn't terribly evident they are even there since they are not marked or maintained.

extreme example, who knows what this clown was doing

Since the Na-Thai road was "renovated" no one uses the bike lane because it is unusable, no one uses the sidewalks because there is nothing to really walk to on this road and there are breaks in the fencing all over the place because this is primarily a residential street. Oh and most of the orange safety cone things have been removed by the local residents.

This has been a colossal waste of money and since (predictably) it wasn't maintained really at all, it is now an eyesore rather than an improvement. There are calls to have it all removed because accidents are incredibly common on this road now whereas before there were almost never any at all.

You should have just widened the road like the original plan called for. Stop trying to be fancy!

Oh, and there is some chatter about how a high-ranking government official had a family member who just happened to acquire exactly the type of equipment necessary for this project months before the money was approved. What incredible luck for him!