Tanapon Panthasen, Bart Lambregts, and Supaporn Kaewko Leopairojana Nakhara: Journal of Environmental Design and Planning (2021) Volume 20(1), Article 106 Bangkok’s Bumpy Road to Sustainable Urban Mobility: Governance Challenges in the Promotion of Cycle-friendliness Tanapon Panthasen1*, Bart Lambregts2, and Supaporn Kaewko Leopairojana1 1 Faculty of Architecture, Kasetsart University, Thailand 2 Faculty of Social Sciences, Kasetsart University, Thailand * Corresponding email:
[email protected] Received 2020-09-22; Revised 2021-05-23; Accepted 2020-12-24 ABSTRACT Many cities promote cycling as an environmentally friendly and healthier mode of urban transport. The challenge often is bigger than anticipated, as it involves inducing behavioural change among different groups of actors and reaching agreement about the reallocation of scarce resources. Recent experiences in Bangkok are illustrative. Here, multi-year efforts by the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) to promote cycling have yielded only partial success. Recreational cycling has increased, but utility cycling much less so. A gap remains between what the BMA delivers in terms of pro-cycling policies and what Bangkokians need in order to become utility cyclists. This paper investigates the characteristics of this gap and the factors that produce it. It finds that safety concerns in particular keep Bangkokians from cycling, and that organizational inefficiencies and failure to commit key actors, a narrow focus on physical output, wavering political leadership, and a failure to