According to this news report, the SMRT will be spending $900 million for the maintenance and repair of the MRT system. Part of the cost will be borne by the Government, through the Land Transport Authority (LTA).
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1197159/1/.html
This seemed to be a complicated arrangement and has ethical issues. SMRT is a listed company owned by shareholders and has the aim to maximise its profits, subject to service standards stipulated by the LTA and fare oversight by the Public Transport Council. The LTA is an agency funded by the Government and eventually the taxpayers.
The taxpayers are not told how the complicated financial arrangement is being decided. In my view, the considerations for the cost sharing, should be publicized for public scrutiny.
It is better to remove all these complicated arrangements and adopt a new model, i.e. let the train service be operated by a public corporation, i.e. one that is owned 100% by the state. The public corporation should decide on the fares, capacity, routes and schedules. The operations can be contracted out to a contractor like the SMRT.
I read that this was the model used by London Transport for the buses. I am not sure how their Underground system, similar to our MRT, is being managed.
It is likely that the London model will not be considered in Singapore, as our ministers and top civil servants are quite comfortable in the Singapore model of "no responsibility". They prefer to outsource all the problems entirely to the "market", so they do not have to decide on fares and operational issues.
As they have now learnt to their embarrassment, the problems do not go away. They come back to hit them in a bigger way. With so many train breakdowns and other operational and financial issues, perhaps our ministers will now re-think the London model?
Tan Kin Lian
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1197159/1/.html
This seemed to be a complicated arrangement and has ethical issues. SMRT is a listed company owned by shareholders and has the aim to maximise its profits, subject to service standards stipulated by the LTA and fare oversight by the Public Transport Council. The LTA is an agency funded by the Government and eventually the taxpayers.
The taxpayers are not told how the complicated financial arrangement is being decided. In my view, the considerations for the cost sharing, should be publicized for public scrutiny.
It is better to remove all these complicated arrangements and adopt a new model, i.e. let the train service be operated by a public corporation, i.e. one that is owned 100% by the state. The public corporation should decide on the fares, capacity, routes and schedules. The operations can be contracted out to a contractor like the SMRT.
I read that this was the model used by London Transport for the buses. I am not sure how their Underground system, similar to our MRT, is being managed.
It is likely that the London model will not be considered in Singapore, as our ministers and top civil servants are quite comfortable in the Singapore model of "no responsibility". They prefer to outsource all the problems entirely to the "market", so they do not have to decide on fares and operational issues.
As they have now learnt to their embarrassment, the problems do not go away. They come back to hit them in a bigger way. With so many train breakdowns and other operational and financial issues, perhaps our ministers will now re-think the London model?
Tan Kin Lian
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