Bangkok Elevated Road and Train System

[2] In 1986, Hopewell Holdings investigated and developed a transport system that could be privately funded and provide the people of Bangkok with a mass transit railway similar to that in operation in Hong Kong.

Following negotiations and an eventual international tender, Hopewell (Thailand) Ltd. signed a 38-year concession agreement with the SRT and the Ministry of Transportation and Communication (MOTC) to build, own, operate, and transfer (BOOT) the BERTS system, with Arup as a leading member of the design team.

The construction plan is divided into 5 phases, consisting of:[7][8] In 1996, some of the contracts were awarded, such as Balfour Beatty for the track laying, AdTranz for supplying the 172 rail cars, and Siemens for the train depots, stations, and signaling systems.

[13] According to an Asian Institute of Technology study, the vast majority of the pillars remain structurally sound and in usable condition, and it has been proposed to use them to build an extension of the BTS Skytrain.

[16] After repeated delays, the Dark Red Line eventually opened for trial operation on 2 August 2021, 31 years after the construction of the Hopewell Project started.

On 23 April 2019, Thailand's Supreme Administrative Court upheld an arbitration committee's ruling in favour of Hopewell, contractor for the 80 billion baht project killed by the government in 1998.

[17] In October 2019 the transport ministry announced that it will seek a reversal of the Supreme Administrative Court's ruling ordering it and the State Railway of Thailand (SRT) to pay compensation to Hopewell.

[20] In 18 September 2023, the "Central Administrative Court [...] overruled [previous ruling], an arbitration tribunal’s order for the Ministry of Transport and the State Railway of Thailand" to pay; Hopewell [Holdings] can appeal.