Wider choice of cards for public transport

The Land Transport Authority plan to introduce a wider choice of cards to be used in public transport in 2009. This requires a big investments to change the readers in buses and MRT stations.

I think that this is a bad idea. It is wasteful. We are spending too much money in hardware. This should be avoided.

There is a perception competition will bring down cost. I doubt it, in this instance. After all, ez-Link is owned by the Government. It is easy to establish performance benchmarks for ez-Link. It is not necessary to have the market to establish it, especially as the market mechanism is likely to impose heavy cost.

I hope that the Government will drop this idea and avoid spending too much money, adding to inflation for the future years.