200 SMRT bus drivers refuse to go to work over pay issue

[teddy]

SMRT Net income (S$m)

FY2011 = 161.1
FY2012 = 119.9

SMRT Operating cash flow (S$m)
FY2011 = 283.3
FY2012 = 282.1

If you look at the operating cash flow (which is not affected by non-cash depreciation & amortization figure), FY2012 = $282.1m!
Imagine if we nationalize SMRT and use this $282.1m earned every year to improve the service and still can reduce the fare price by a lot! :imcool:

sunflower:

Just wondering out loud, the possible revenue and expenditure of our public transport companies.

Revenue
IncomeTax
GST
Bus/MRT Fares
ERP
COE
Road Tax
Sale of mrt cards
Advertisements that are everywhere in the mrt stations, seen plastered all over the floor/walls/poster stands and every inch of space that can be utilized.
Advertisements on the exterior AND inside buses and trains.
Rental of so many shops inside and within the premises of mrt stations. (I think rental rates should be quite high given the high traffic at the stations).
Investment, perhaps from parent company (not finance person so not sure whether can be done).

Expenditure
Salary, from top management to drivers and maintenance workers and cleaners (I think cleaners are outsourced).
Share holders
Fuel
Service, maintenance and repair of bus/trains/tracks/stations, including purchasing equipment and replacement parts.
Upgrading/getting new buses/trains.
Building more stations and railway lines.

Please add if I’ve missed out anything. Just wondering how do they allocate the revenue for each category of the expenditure. Is raising fares the ONLY way? I wouldn’t agree to raising income tax or GST for this purpose as I would rather it be channeled to other ministries such as education or healthcare etc which are not privatised and which depend largely on the government to provide the funds.

I would think providing public transport is a BASIC and ESSENTIAL need by the government. It should not function EXACTLY like other private entities where revenue come SOLEY from getting customers to buy their services or products. In the case of private enterprise, people have a choice to CHOOSE whether to spend money on the services/products provided, a case of want, not need.

If one has the means, one can choose whether to take bus/mrt or go get a car. For someone without the means, he/she would have no choice but to take the bus/mrt. If not, either the person get around by foot or sacrifice living expenses in other areas in order to use the public transport. Remember, many people taking bus/mrt cannot even choose to pay for a “cheaper” bus/mrt fare to save some money on living expenses simply because there is no choice!

Before we shout “Increase the fares to pay the drivers!”, have we thought of the wages of other groups of people (many may also be earning as much as the drivers) who have to fork out money for the wages for this group of people to increase? If raise fares so as to raise drivers’ salary, then the commoners’ salary should also be raised accordingly, and this may create a never ending viscous cycle affecting other industrial sectors as well. Are bosses in other groups willing to increase wages? How is this going to affect the bottom line of many other industries? Are we even willing to accept minimum wages?

Perhaps there should be more of thinking out of the box to keep fares low but raising drivers’ salary? Remember one minister said “better, cheaper, faster”? Hee, think they should apply this principle to themselves first and see how and whether this works before advising other enterprise to do so.

Ministers like to talk about productivity, so they should increase productivity and reduce/save cost by streamlining processes or think of innovative ways to cut cost on the non-essentials without compromising on safety and efficiency, thus passing savings to the pay of drivers. We could also relook the % allocation or think of other ways to utilize and increase those income generating revenue already stated at the start of the post. If there’s a will, there’s a way, instead of going the straight forward, short cut method textbook answer of getting money directly from consumers, many of those do not even have a choice of not using the service.

[raysusan]

interesting read from another website

[quote]At last, the government recognizes that the bus drivers need to be paid more. Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew said:

“Any fare adjustment will allow the two operators to have more resources, in time to come, to make further salary adjustments to their drivers. We recognize that the drivers need to be paid more. (The) question is, where is that money coming from?”

I wholeheartedly agree that the drivers need to be paid more. Let me attempt the question “Where is that money coming from?”

I note that cross-subsidy as a concept is not anathema to the bus companies and the government. In fact, cross-subsidies are already in operation:

• Revenue collected from more profitable routes is applied to offset the loss-making routes. This has been a deliberate policy for all time in governing route planning.

• Profits from non-transport related operations (advertisements, rentals and other investments) have been useful to help the companies maintain a good and decent level of profitability overall and the directors and shareholders can still be well paid (via directors’ fees, bonus declarations…) even if part of the profits go towards cross-subsidizing the essential loss sectors. Shareholders can urge the directors to work very hard (as they should) to explore more efforts towards maintaining profitability at a level without greed so that they (the shareholders) and the companies can gain higher respect for their corporate conscience not to overburden ordinary Singaporeans who are already getting breathless with the high costs of living.

• The government is already using public funds to pay for the operators’ new buses. Such public funds, as the name tells obviously, come from the public, including the public bus commuters. It is a form of cross-subsidy from the public pocket for the bus operators’ assets. Can COE collections, road taxes, ERP revenue, petrol tax, traffic fines, etc. be applied to cross-subsidize such a basic and essential service as a reliable bus service that the economy can depend on?

• The bus companies are already operating many value-added services (e.g. premium bus service). There is cross-subsidy at work to ensure profitability.

• The bus and train operations should be seen as a valuable partnership in consideration of the transportation service as a single seamless public good. Where one operation is in better profitability, it can cross-subsidise the other to account for overall profitability of the companies to the shareholders.

Presently, the ezlink hybrid bus/train season pass for the public is priced at $170/$190 per month. This price is exorbitant and attracts only a niche demand. If the pricing can be reduced to $90/$100 (say) to cater to mass market, it may become a common pre-pay fare preference by the public to enable full freedom of travel transfers to complete a journey from point A to point B with the assurance of cost control. This will naturally and evenly spread out the commuting crowd between the high-load services and the low-demand ones, resulting in better commuter satisfaction (with lesser squeeze) and efficiency of service provision by the transport operators as there is full usage across services without the attendant resource wastage for otherwise low-demand services concomitant with the insatiable pumping of more resources to beef up the high-demand services.

Service planning to manage a more uniform supply and demand across services will also be much facilitated, and costs for the operator will be reduced not just by this fact but also by a form of cross-subsidy at work just like pre-paid smartphone data services where there is cross-subsidy between high data users and low data users but all customers are happy for the conveniences to their mobility. What the transport operators need to do is to set the season-pass price at the right level not to be loss-making while at the same time it is not seen as overpriced for covetous profit.

I urge the shareholders to be mindful as Singapore citizens to be conscientious and socially conscious to care for their fellow Singaporeans who are not so fortunate to be able to become shareholders to earn bonuses. An increase in fare of x cents is always AFFORDABLE, when seen in isolation from the small unannounced AFFORDABLE increases creeping into medical consultation fees, unannounced AFFORDABLE increases of profits that the drug dispensers seek, the AFFORDABLE increases in motor insurance premiums resulting in the inflation of school transport fees, the AFFORDABLE increases in rentals resulting in increases in hawker food, etc.

INCREASES, INCREASES, INCREASES … ad infinitum – each is always AFFORDABLE and there are always two categories of takers of the increase: firstly, those who are forced to take the increase and tighten their belts ever more; secondly, those who gleefully take the increases to expand the rich-poor divide as the rich get richer with indifference to the domestic inflation they cause (because they always find everything VERY AFFORDABLE for their spending) at the expense of the multitudes at the wrong end of the divide who suffer a relentless squeeze on their disposable income and rainy-day savings. The poor get poorer by the day with every increase in price, exacerbating the rich-poor gap (HOPEFULLY NOT WITH THE ENDORSEMENT OF A GOVERNMENT WHICH IS INATTENTIVE TO THE ALIENATION OF THE MASSES).

I know that increasing tax collections by way of raising the tax rate for the high-income brackets and introducing capital tax to deal with the problem of the runaway wealth gap of citizens are heavy subjects to contemplate. The ideas in this article may be superficial, but perhaps they can kick off a concerted deliberation by our transportation professionals and talented civil servants to come out with sustainable out-of-the-box solutions instead of always going for AFFORDABLE INCREASE NO. 1, AFFORDABLE INCREASE NO. 2, AFFORDABLE INCREASE NO. 3 … just like FINE INCREASE NO. 1, FINE INCREASE NO. 2 … as if raising stress for ordinary wage earners is always THE BEST SOLUTION. Very soon, the word “AFFORDABLE” becomes totally meaningless to the hearers.

I don’t wish to see habitual and inequitable fiscal measures being bandied about at will, reaching the proverbial last-straw breaking point for the economy when a big crash ensues.[/quote]

[iRabbit]

Raysusan,


Interesting article, can share the URL? One thing I don’t understand is why would lower pre-pay cards help spread the crowd?

But I like the argument that things are always affordable when seen in isolation.

[Twinkies]

Dora1:

Twinkies, have u been to HK and Taipei? Both mrt are a lot more efficient than SG. HK is abt the same price as SG iirc. Taipei is definitely cheaper, and free for kids below 7. Their mrt is not perfect, but a lot better than the current SG. Actually they remind me of the mrt that SG had maybe 10 years ago? Reliable, predictable efficient and cheap.


Which other country in the world has car prices that are remotely near to SG's car price? In other countries, people decide to take public transport because its relatively convenient and cheaper instead of private cars because of parking charges, congestion, cannot find parking lot etc. so if the public transport is not well run or not value for money, ppl will simply turn to driving, and endure the high parking charges and congestion. This is the competition that I'm talking abt. some cities like Perth offer totally free buses for some routes to encourage ppl to use public transport.
The SGP model is totally diff. Most people in SG have been priced out of the car market, so taking public transport is not only an option, it is a necessity. Whether the public transport is reliable, value for money etc, they still have to take it. So if you are the transport operator, why would u want to put money to improve the services huh? What's the incentive for doing that?

Dora, before we proceed, do you actually know how much of the cost for a single station MTR ride in HK? And, the fare for 5 stations MTR ride? And 8 stations journey ride on HK MTR?

Maybe, you have got yourself confused about the HK MTR with the HK 九铁 (九铁, the train... the one that HK people ride to 罗湖 in 深圳 China... it's not the MTR or MRT in SG term, it's a train, not MRT/MTR.., I hope you get what I mean.)


-HK MTR is better than SG's MRT??????

HK MTR trains are old and dimly lit; their MTR stations are quite run down, poor ventilation, the platforms are way too narrow for today's world standard, the breadth is about a full arm length (2.5x of an adult male's shoulder to shoulder length), and most of the stations are without glass pane door; the commuters often have to resort to climbing up the stairs due to the overly crowded and congested escalators; often the MTR staffs have to halt the over congested escalator to prevent accident. 
SG's MRT ride and it's stations are heavenly compare to HK... I am sure many KS parents here have been to HK and have taken their MTR to validate my statement.

HK MTR's rating is inferior comparing to SG MRT!!! (Who else is in doubt?)

And, their MTR train services broke down ever so often... it's on the average of twice monthly. Yap! 24x or more average, yearly..

Side track a bit:- When SG's MRT service disruption last Nov generated such a big hoo-haa, HK people were so amused at how pampered the SG commuters!! A single one train service disruption in 20 plus years is almost unheard of, for us Hongkongers!!! It's to us the HIGHEST kind of standard one could ever had, and the BEST quality train service in the world standard,  (Of course that's according to the World Standard; but SG people has always set their standard and their expectation of their service providers way above the world!!)

Many people around the world could only dreamt to have your kind of public transport services... our HK 地铁 train breakdown so often that by now there aren't even news worthy anymore; (that's why you SG people are not reading about it anymore on your papers!!) 
The SG commuters made such a big fuss when the first ever train service disruption in 20+years... So much so that the highest management personnel had to resign... tsk tsk tsk... the world according to the Singaporeans, NO DISRUPTION IS EVER EVER ALLOWED!!! OR SOMEONE'S HEAD IS ON THE CHOPPING BOARD!!

PS:- Is the HK MTR's fare really lower than the SG MRT? I am sure member Dora1 could share her finding with all of us... 
(It's easy peasie, google for it and you shall get it!!)

[Dora1]

Twinkies


From your post, I assume you are from HK then? Maybe you can share more with us. IIRC the trains are at a interval of about 1.5min during peak hours, and 2 or 3 min during off peak. I was a tourist there, and that was what I observed. Maybe you can verify? It was very crowded, no doubt. But if you cannot get on this train, the next train comes 1.5min later. So although crowded, but it gets people from one place to the other promptly. But in SG, the peak hour interval is easily 3 min. And many times, you can’t get on the 1st train. So waiting time increases. And don’t get me started on the 6min interval for off peak. And you wait 6 min to get into a very crowded train at 9pm on a weekday night. 10+ years ago, I have never remembered having to wait 6min during off peak hours for a train in SG, other than maybe at 11pm when it was near the end of service. And the population was a lot smaller back then. It is very unfortunate that it took a watershed election for the gov to finally realise this to pressurize SMRT to increase the frequency.

And in HK, there are a lot of private bus companies operating big and small buses in the city on various routes. From my point of view, at least there were options. It was a truly free market system. HK MTR breakdown 2x a month? That is very different from what my HK colleagues tell me. Anyway, what is your definition of breakdown? If it’s those 15 min delay, I think SG MRT is probably close to that number as well, from personal experiences.

In SG, private bus operators (other than those 2) have an impossibly difficult time getting a license to operate public routes. And, there have been great pains to ensure that bus and mrt don’t overlap. I don’t know how long you have been here, but Bukit Panjang was an excellent example. They removed the feeder buses once the LRT was in operation. Unfortunately, the LRT kept breaking down, and the residents were truly stranded with no feeder bus. Many many appeals were made, and they had to make it a political issue just before a election (not the 2011 one) to have feeder buses reinstated.
And many years ago, I used to have a lot of trunk services that brings me direct to town at a bus stop near me. However, when the NEL was up, all the buses were removed, never mind that the nearest NEL was a good 20min walk from my place. So I had to take a feeder bus to get to the NEL and to transfer to NEL. Frankly, the total amt of time it takes is the same. If they had not removed the buses, I would have continued with the buses. But they successfully created a monopoly and forced people to take the train.

Anyway, you are entitled to think that SG has the best public transport system in the world. But I hope that most of us in SG don’t think so. If we think we are the best, that means, no need to improve already = complacency. And complacency is the most direct route to failure.

The current privitized monopoly system is a lose-lose situation for the commuters. They can increase price and provide poor service, and we still have to take the MRT, unless we make it a political issue like last year. Is this a sustainable system? Like now, they want to increase the bus drivers pay, the 1st thing they think of is to increase fares.
If we want to continue with the current private operator system, I say, let it be a true private market. Encourage other small bus operators to offer bus routes, even if they overlap with the current MRT or bus routes. Don’t impose so many restrictions and fees. Facilitate the creation of competition. Let people have a choice so that companies like SMRT will not be so complacent and profit orientated. If not, what is preventing SMRT to repeat what Ms S has done to the company for the last 10 years?

[concern2]

WeiHan:

matrix0405:

[quote=\"WeiHan\"]People may be missing the point whether they argue for or against higher pay for workers.


The point is that common workers never have the advantage that elites that make the rules have. The workers salary may increase after they exert political pressure, protest, make it to the street etc...but remember..that is only after a lag time-in the meantime while they are fighting for pay rise, inflation has already gone much higher. In other words, pay rise for common workers is always behind the inflation curve.

In this world, only smart people win the game.

That is why there is a one man one vote. This system allows to 95% sheep to hold the 5% lions responsible.

But these 95% bark up the wrong trees sometimes....then sometimes they were made used...in the end, they are still in the losing end.[/quote] You just tickled me and activated my funny bone!

Don't forget that there are:
1) sheep who work for the lions
2) sheep who think they are lions
3) sheep who think they can get the lion's share by becoming the lion's spokes person.
4) amidst the 3 above, they didn't realize they are also one of the sheep and scapegoat.

Oops, sorry, :offtopic:

[concern2]

Ikid:

... no logic, when commuters are asked to pay for their pay increase. My boss not increasing my pay, who is going to pay my pay rise ? My living costs are rising, who is helping me to pay?

That is precisely how people are feeling. Funny thing is that there ARE actually people who find it ACCEPTABLE that commuters should bear the pay rise, and it is only a fact of life that the commuters BEAR WITH IT, and FIND THEIR OWN SOLUTIONS to survive, and that this is what LIFE is all about. I say this is UNIQUELY SINGAPORE.

[concern2]

\"PAP MP says public has \"misunderstood\" Transport Minister on fare hike\"


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQxRsyQ2Psg&feature=share

What do you think?

[ChiefKiasu]

Moderator’s Note:

Action has been taken to embargo all posts irrelevant to this thread.
Please stay on the issue, people, and not on one another.

[concern2]

Would this be considered relevant?


\"Singlish - 38: Singlish Minister addressed China Bus Drivers' Strike\"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiU6focczOA