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September 17 The ERP ironySent to Straits Times Forum
17 September 2008
New transport price structure is an ERP irony
The new public transport fare structure provides a good rebate for transfers. This is an encouraging sign to reduce waiting time by shortening the bus routes to allow faster redeployment of each vehicle. This also means a higher frequency of bus arrivals.
Public buses have been subjected to the ERP earlier.
The objective of the ERP is to reduce traffic, hence, improve speeds along congested roads. This has seen certain success in improving road conditions in the Republic.
The ERP does not seem coherent with the new fare structure, and the greater bus service frequencies it seemed to want to achieve.
Also, the Public Transport Committee (PTC), which is established under the Ministry of Transport, and Land Transport Authorities (LTA) has a good set of service standards stated at http://www.ptc.gov.sg/services_standard.asp.
Point 4.4 of the PTC service standards webpage says "At least 80% of bus services to operate at headway of not more than 15 minutes (to be changed to 10 minutes with effect from Aug 2009) during weekday (excluding public holidays) peak periods, unless otherwise stipulated by the PTC."
This means that the ERP cannot reduce the traffic volume of the public buses due to the PTC regulations. The ERP however, punishes the public transportation operators by increasing their operating costs for service improvements in reducing waiting times while running counter objective of both the PTC service standards, and the new fare objectives. These additional costs are not necessary, and will instead be passed to the consumers of public transportation, with no real value-add nor service improvements.
ONG Lip Hua (MR) |
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