Public transportation in times of Corona: Which transportation option is the safest?

It is well known now that the coronavirus can be transmitted from human to human. The World Health Organization (WHO) has classified this event as a “Global Pandemic”, and it has impacted billions of lives all-across the globe. The numbers of infections all over the world are increasing exponentially. As a result, people all over the world are practicing “social distancing” and try to avoid going outside as much as possible. However, complete isolation is still an impossible task for many people. We still need to travel to go get groceries, take our grandparents to the hospital for periodic checkups, and, for some of us, working from home is not possible for that specific job, especially for medical and governmental workers. But are there differences, regarding to the risk of getting infected while using different transportation options?

Public transportation in Bangkok is versatile. There are transportation options which transport many users at the same time as the BTS, MRT, ARL, Buses and Canal Boats. On the other hand, there are transportation options who are designed for more custom transportation routes like Taxi, Grab, Motorbike-Taxi and TukTuk.

The BTS has a daily ridership of 750,000 people on an average weekday. In other words, 40,000 people using the BTS per hour. This amount of people can fill the entire football stadium. In addition, the MRT has a daily ridership of 470,000 people. More precisely, this are 26,000 people using the MRT per hour. Furthermore, there are approximately about 140,000 taxis in the city. An average taxi in Bangkok has about 9 to 25 users a day. In addition to taxi, there is also a popular ridesharing application called Grab that has similar traffic in comparison to taxi. According to WHO, this virus can be spread from person to person within 1 meter of distance and has the capability to survive on hard surface for up to 9 days. This makes this virus extremely contagious, and it is recommended to avoid high traffic location and shared spaces.

Carsharing is another alternative. HAUPCAR is Thailand’s first and largest carsharing network. Based on our data, each of our car get 2 rentals on an average day and has space for up to 5 people. A general advantage of carsharing is that a user can have the flexibility and convenient of driving a car without the financial burdens of owning one. In response to COVID-19, HAUP has partnered with Instawash in order to “Deep Clean” all our cars twice a week and to ensure that we are able to provide the safesttransportation option for our customers in Thailand. Instawash uses a 70% alcohol liquid in its exterior and interior deep cleaning procedures. As advised by WHO, any liquid that has over 60% alcohol content will kill the COVID-19 virus. With our rigorous Deep Cleaning procedure, the risk of an infection due to touching elements like steering wheel or handrails is strikingly decreased.

Car ownership is also another safe option for personal transportation. However, a car is a depreciating asset. The car will drop 20% in value as soon as you drove the car out of the dealership. Especially during a global economic crisis like this one, one should explore pay per use options like carsharing to lower the liabilities on his or her personal balance sheet. The liabilities of owning a car go far beyond loan payments. They include monthly insurance premium, monthly parking expense, monthly fuel expense, maintenance expenses, cleaning expense, car taxes and much more. We advise our users to utilize carsharing and invest their savings in appreciating assets such as real estates, equity market, and, most importantly, yourself.

Currently HAUPCAR has over 150 stations all over Bangkok and parts of Chiangmai. Most of our stations are located around BTS/MRT stations, condominiums, and universities. Our goal is to provide the most convenient, affordable, and the safest transportation option to Thai citizens. Our customers can rent our cars in increments of 30 minutes. Our hourly rate starts at 89 THB and daily rate starts at 719 THB. This makes us one of the most affordable means of transportation options in the nation. Nevertheless, during this Global Pandemic, we highly recommend our users to consider our weekly and monthly rentals instead of hourly and daily. Although the risk of infection for carsharing is already extremely low because we “Deep Clean” our cars twice a week, a weekly or monthly rental will eliminate the risk of infection due to carsharing down to 0%.

There is nothing more valuable than your health and the wellbeing of your loved ones. HAUP is committed to make our weekly and monthly rates as affordable as they possibly can during times like this for our valuable customers. Please refer to the pricing table below, and for further inquiries, please add our LINE @HAUPCAR. Together, we will defeat COVID-19.

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