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Wednesday, May 13, 1:10:10 [ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, [2], 3, 4 ]

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Date Posted: 20/02/04 16:47
Author: Jacob
Subject: Re: 交通費
In reply to: P 's message, "交通費" on 20/02/04 12:22

If you take humanity science or political science as two branches of technology, the public transport pricing issue is a much higher tech problem than sending manned rocket to orbit earth which involves only 1960s technology.

Even a lot of rich countries fail to solve it satisfactorily. People keep yelling about that on street protests.

It is a political issue, i.e. who will support it and who will not, on top of an economical issue, i.e. who will pay more and who will pay less.

There are a lot of possible ways of improvement. Take a simple example, if KCR and MTR merge to become one company, the public may not need to pay twice for a journey from NT to Hong Kong Island. You save half the ticket fare.

There may be a decrease in revenue. Will the government finance the shortfall? KCR and MTR still need to pay their own bills and debts. Also, are all directors in the board of directors of both companies willing to accept a merger? A lot of interests group will be alarmed. Some top officials talked about that suggestion before. I believe they must have already seriously thought about that. There must be some barriers that I don't know.

I believe if the government take lowering transport fee as a high priority, it can be achieved. The fact is there are other high competing priorities like building more roads and bridges and lowering fiscal budget deficit. A lot of Mainlanders are zealous about building bridges and may be disappointed if not having enough money. It may mean the government may need to take more money from somewhere to help the poor to pay less.

Now the Government is running short of money. They will say hardship of poor people is not the whole picture.

It is a matter of re-budget and re-organisation. Also, it involves matter of production incentive, i.e. should we allow public transit to operate at a loss or with a low level of profit and rely on government funding.

Rich people have their own cars. To lower public transport fee is not a high priority to them. They hate tax hike more.

It involves a matter of compromise and balance of interests among different stakeholder groups in the community, i.e. who should pay more and who should pay less.

In politics, anyone may be fired if he/she makes a lot of powerful people angry. In order to get things done, not being fired is the number one priority.

Raise a possible solution, get voted down and then get fired may not solve any problem.

The highest cost of any solution is always the political cost, not the operating costs or construction costs.

We all are living under limitations.

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