4. Characteristics of Long-Tailed Boat Service
Long-tail boats in the canals of Bangkok
offer two types of services: regular services which
cater to the public commuters with specified
route and a fixed fare rate set by operators and
the irregular services which serve as for-hired
or chartered boat like water taxi service. The
scope of this paper focuses on the regular longtailed
boat service only. In the past, while
Bangkok commuters still relied on the service of
long-tailed boats, several routes were in
operation to cater the needs of public especially
those who live along the canals. To some, they
had no other alternative except to rely on this
public mode of transport for their commuting.
However, with the later development of road
based transport, several areas which must solely
depend on water transport became more