Your money can buy lesser things now. This should come as a no-surprise to many people since inflation is part and parcel of life. Its just that this time, the inflation seems to be much more than normal. Together with the increase in GST, many vendors have increased prices all at one go, attributing it to past increases of price of flour blabla and that they are increasing everything at one go.
Now, school bus fares have gone up, and taxi fares are going up soon in one company, and other companies may soon follow the new pricing system.
For one, I read in the newspaper (forgot which day was it) that the taxi companies just inform the Public Transport Council about the increase in price, and the PTC can do nothing about it. Somehow I wonder what the PTC is for in this instance. Like a figurehead perhaps?
School bus fares are up. Have anyone of you ever wondered, why they do not decrease their bus fares when petrol prices drop? The school bus council thingy says they are leaving it to the demand and supply mechanism. The free market mechanism. Just that it is a monopolistic situation? I don’t know about you, but I remembered that I had only one option to take and that is that school bus. Never mind options like public buses though, I am focusing on my options for school buses. Can I change school buses when I decide that the fare is too high? Probably not. In a way, it is a monopoly. Unless everyone steps in to change the bus service provider, most likely everyone is going to take the increase in price and pay more.
Besides, what other options do parents have? School buses are normally for children of 12 years and below in primary schools and kindergarten. Parents worry for their safety, thus they hire services of the school bus. Thus public transport is an option not considered by parents. Furthermore, there are strangers on the bus who are suspicious until proven otherwise.
I wonder if the respective councils will be transparent and submit their detailed reports to allow everyone to scrutinize their need to raise prices again. And oh.. it seems that in today’s Straits Times forum, someone wrote in to talk about taxi drivers choosing passengers based on distance travelled. Well, if they want to raise prices, do raise their service standards too.
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What service standards? One Tuesday, I waited for bus (and it’s a 2 bus stop trip) for 20 over minutes. Meantime I can actually count the number of other buses that came and went.
Yesterday, after a drinking session with a friend, we waited for a cab to no avail, and we walked all the from Tanjong Pagar, to New Bridge Road to catch a cab. And the cab that stopped, we didn’t even flag. It was showing a ‘Busy’ sign, and then suddenly it just stopped and went to ‘Taxi’.
If I ever get to write the service standards required, they would never have passed.