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Saturday, May 14, 2005
[Fare hikes...]
Fares for public transport are raising again. What a surprise. No wait, it's not.
The general public has been very vocal in voicing out their displeasure at the fare hikes, however small they may be. The transport companies' spin doctors arrived on the scene today in the papers, giving reasons for the hike. One reason was increasing fuel costs.
I'm a consumer. I don't give a shit about your fuel costs. All I know is that I've NEVER been able to board a bus home from school after 6pm. Each and every 963 at go pasts NUS after 6pm either drive past the bus stop altogether, or it stops a fair distance away from the bus stop, drops the alighting passengers, and then carries on without picking anyone up. This can last all the way to 7:40pm. Maybe even later, but the latest I've ever been at that bus stop was 7:40pm. If it's after 6pm, I usually just board any bus that comes along and changes to 184 at Clementi. They could easily fix this problem by increasing the number of buses plying the route during peak hours. But they choose not to do so. As far as I'm concerned, the public transport service here is NOT world-class. As for the companies increasing fares to cover fuel costs, both SMRT and ComfortDelgro has reported staggering profits in their last profit report (whatever, I don't know what's it called....I'm a consumer, remember?).
Another one of the points brought up by the spin doctors was that the average fare here is still lower than that in other countries. They, of course, only mention the countries where the fare was higher. Anyway, the average fare in Singapore is 65 cents it seems. I realise that this probably takes into account the fare paid by secondary school students, which accounts for why the average is so low (how many adults pay 65 cents for their trip?). This also means I've been paying way above average. It costs $1.23 one way to NUS.
But that's not the main issue. The main issue here is that the spin doctor pointed out that the average fare in the United States is S$1.40. This is a bullshit comparison. Ignoring the exchange rate, the value of money is more or less the same as in Singapore. Walk into a department store in the US, and you'll find that the prices are very similar to those in Singapore. This means if a shirt sells for S$X in Singapore, there's a good chance it sells for about US$X in the US. By converting the average fare in the US to S$, the price difference has been OVERSTATED. In reality, it's probably just a few cents difference. But due to the exchange rate, it seems that the average fare in the US is way higher than that in Singapore.
Don't be fooled.
^^^ by Locksley @ 10:35 AM.
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