it is usually socially beneficial for competition to be present
in a market. under competition, firms are forced offer their
services (or goods) at a more competitive price, which translates
to consumers paying a price near the cost of production of the
service.
having competition between bus operators will no doubt force the
operators to review on the quality of their services (which may
include pricing of fares, waiting time, peak periods etc.). in
order to gain a greater share of the market, they will definitely
have to invest resources on research and development, and perhaps
advertisement.
however, in the case of Singapore, having competition probably
will not be feasible, and might end up bringing more harm to
society, rather than improving lives for us.
imagine: bus operators do end up vying for businesses on the
same routes. the frequency of buses will probably increase. but
what will come after that?
first of all, air pollution will follow. with the increase in
vehicles on the road (and i'm guessing that heavy vehicles such as
buses will produce more harmful gas than the usual 4 wheel drives),
the quality of air will deteriorate, bringing harm to the masses'
health. more resources may be required to solve the air pollution
problem.
secondly, traffic congestions may arise from it. right now, bus
commuters enjoy bus lanes during peak hours, which allow public
transport to be more efficient. with competition, bus departure
timings may very well overlap, causing congestion in the bus lanes.
this is especially possible during peak hours, when traffic is slow
and is difficult to estimate.
thirdly, the extra resources (take for example, petrol) used on
the overlapping bus services are not utilised efficiently. in an
ideal case, each litre of petrol fuels a fully (and comfortably)
filled bus of commuters to travel the maximum distance the litre of
petrol allows it to. for example, 10 litres of petrol is required
for a bus of 40 commuters to travel 10km. with 2 overlapping bus
services, these 40 commuters may be split into 2 buses (each bus
carries 20 commuters), and now 20 litres of petrol is required for
the 2 buses of a total of 40 commuters to travel the same 10km.
also, consider the methods of competition. if resources were
spent on improving the quality of commuting (example: seats that
are more comfortable, safer and sturdier buses etc.), then perhaps
society can benefit from this competition. however, should bus
operators decide to advertise excessively, instead of improving
their services (which is very common in many forms of market),
society will not benefit from it. instead, resources are, again,
inefficiently spent on excessive advertisements to shape the
preferences of commuters.
another point to take note is how small our country is for there
to be competition between bus operators. just take for example, the
period when there were Mediacorp and Mediaworks operating at the
same time. operators suffered and (i'm guessing) were not able to
sustain. the public transport market may be different from the
media industry, but similarities can be drawn.
in my opinion, it is not so much about competition that is
lacking in the public transport industry in Singapore. it is the
direction set by the management: they seem to have lost focus on
providing an efficient safe, and comfortable transport to the
masses in Singapore, and (i hope i'm wrong), have chosen to focus
on the benefits of their shareholder; which brings me to my
disagreement with having privatised companies run the public
transport system. the operators should never be like other
companies, seeking to maximise profits.
but o wells, if you know who are among the stakeholders, you'll
come to understand why all these shit are happening.
anyway, it is great to see someone bothering to come up with
solutions to solve this problem, rather than complaining about it
over facebook and twitter, which serves no purpose at all.
great job =)
