wa
lan.
Now I see the
cost per unit.....I gotta ask again.
You mean
this justifies ANY fare hike?
Sorry. But SMRT
is disappointing me even if I like MAN....its a rather wasteful
purchase when what we need are really higher capacity
buses....otherwise buses that are not too expensive and at least
have a larger spare-parts market here that can help lower
depreciation costs.
Doubtless SMRT's
purchase might lower the costs for SBST if it decides to purchase
MAN...but why SMRT did not follow up with larger orders on the
Citaro is really mystifying especially since SBST is already doing
it a favour with a large Citaro order.
In short, SMRT's
decision gets an F from me again. 10 Citaros? 10 BYDs? Now 100++
MAN.
How is this
productive, you ask me?
SBST gets my
support for the fare hike. NOT SMRT. Uber
disappointing with what I've been hearing.
Maybe someone
should help justify this purchase and help restore any faith in
SMRT in me.
But before
that:
Here's what our
transport minister has to say:
The Transport Minister pointed out that, an
entity that depends on Government funding and which operates on a
cost-recovery basis, "would have little incentive to keep costs
down".
Said Mr Lui: "Cost increases will be passed on to commuters. Over
time, this will lead to higher costs for the same level of service,
which means commuters pay higher - and not lower - fares. Not only
would people have to pay more, nationalising the operators could
result in a stagnation of service quality or efficiency over
time."
What nonsense. I'm not buying WP's arguments
either. The problem here doesn't lie with privatisation but with
who's actually calling the shots and the how the market is
regulated! You can nationalise and give crappy services, but you
can also privatise and still give crappy
services!
Are our politicians treating people like us
as bystanding idiots?
Cost per unit? Do you have accurate and confirmed number of
buses this 65mil is worth? Everything here is speculation. Look at
smrt's annual report for some info on their plan on fleet
replacement and expansion.
Why not citaro? If smrt needs buses asap, can they wait for 300
sbst citaros to complete production and delivery? Don't forget
there might already be other companies ordering their buses from MB
already. If it takes about 1 year to queue for the order, is it
still viable to buy citaros? These are things that companies have
to decide that's not quite visible to the general public. STK on
the other hand, can simply buy imported chassis imported kits to
build locally, at any time and rate they want.
Mr Lui is talking about a govt entity which WP proposed for, so
please dont mis-quote him.
