I REFER to the report, 'Government will try to keep transport costs down' (Dec 22).

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No direct link BUT got indirect link?

read how our MRT making excessive profits at our expense compared to taipei http://www.littlespeck.com/content/d...Dev-081230.htm

they move less people but double our train trips per day. They invite people to sing praises of their MRT writing poetry. we can't wait fast enough to send them brickbats which they refuse to accept real-time complaints.

'Government will try to keep transport costs down' (Dec 22). HOW? let SMRT/NEL charge so much and stinge on services to max profits? - read the taipei article. they have 2000++ daily trips compared to our 1000+ trips despite a lower commuter load. lip service not required but only concrete action needed please.
If lowering costs means cutting down trips to 500 per day and not increasing prices but still maintaining the same profit margins - completely unacceptable.
Who is lowering their trips to 500? But then nobody is asking for free travel and 8.5% GST either.

Notice that over the past decade or so, the cost of private and "public" transport costs move in different different direction?

Car prices have gone down by over 60% and even then, inflation is not taken into consideration yet, which mean cost is even lower. Toyota cost $130,000 more than a decade ago now cost $55,000. A Mercedes cost $300,000 then now cost $135,000. Their taxes: Mainly import taxes, additional taxes, and road taxes have all adjusted down.

This never happen to public transport. Public transport costs (bus, MRT and taxi) are on an uptrend for so many decades and now these companies' stocks are now one of the most profitable stocks to hold and to buy, especially in this economy downturn.

There are countries that use the revenue (taxes) generated from the private car owners to partly offset the cost of running a public transport system. This means helping the lower and no-income earners.

PTC has failed to highlight one fundamental weakness in their explanation.

I believe the transport fare formula is reasonable. What everyone forgets is that the transport operators need to submit proposals whenever they want fare increase and they will need to justify it using the fare formula.

However in times like this where CPI and WI are falling, what the transport operators can simply do is DONT submit any fare review proposals! PTC can simply say no fare revision required, even though costs and wages are falling.

PTC : we just want you to be fair to us. If raised last year by 3% (or 0.7% net as PTC claim), just simply revised it down by the same %. We are not asking fares to be down 40%! Your tone is similiar to the Transport Minister who asks whether we can take it if GST was increased in exchange of free rides.

The biggest flaw in this formula is Wage Index (WI, which measures national average monthly earnings).

It include the monthly earnings of the top 20% wage earners who do not take public transport. With huge rich-poor gap we are facing, the top income earners keep the WI high distorting the real financial stress of the low income earners.

The WI should be reformed to include the lowest 60% income earners only.

Can the Transport Ministry reveal to the public the exact formula for determining the cost of transport? From the reply, all we know is that this cost depends on the CPI and Wage Index.

Even if tranport cost depends on inflation and wage levels, it still doesn't make much sense here. According to the latest news, Singapore's inflation has eased in November 2008 and many analysts believe that inflation will ease further this year 2009, compared with those earlier months of 2008. If higher inflation and the higher oil prices in the earlier months of 2008 resulted in an increase of transport cost of 3%, shouldn't an easing of inflation and lower oil prices at least warrant a reduction in transport cost?

In addition, more people are getting retrenched, which means that they are not earning any wages. Do these people contribute to the wage index by reducing it? Does a reduction in wage index mean that transport cost should go up? If so, does it make any sense to worsen the sufferings of the retrenched?

Further to newsstorm's comment.

LTA should return vehicle taxations to the higher levels of late 2005, road tax, import tax, other tax and registration fees, etc. Otherwise, large number of poor are subsiding small number rich on land transport. Basis of my premise,

LTA stated that revenue from road transport collection is reduced because richer people who owns cars pays lesser direct tax, while poorer people who squeeze in public transport contributed handsomely to bottomlines of transport companies (which is not part of revenue captured by LTA's direct revenue collection system).

LTA could have handled the situation better.

According to a news report in 2005, the formula actually allows for fare reduction in an economic downturn. So, are we going to see a fare reduction?