Increase the Cab Fares even more!!

8 comments

According to an article on Asiaone, the Transport Mini$ter Raymond Lemon Lim said:

Based on figures provided by ComfortDelGro, Singapore’s biggest taxi operator, cabbies are pocketing about $11 more a day, earning about $318.

By the most conservative calculation based on metered fare alone, fares have gone up by 8.3%. (That figure is derived by the old metered fare of 20cts every 420m then compared to only 385m now. i.e. 35/420, which is approximately 8.3%.)

However, the cabbie has only earned $11 more, netting them $318 now which means they used to earn about $307 formerly. That translates into just 3.6% increase in income. Not even a 50% increase of the 8.3% fare increase!

And that isn’t the best part yet. The cabbie needs to make about 16 trips of $20 to make that amount a day. $11 over 16 trips means each cabbie is making about 69cts a trip.

Now compared that to our PM’s pay which increased 22.5% (from $3.1 million to $3.8 million) and clearly, the fare increments are * gasp * NOT enough!

They should do more to help cabbies… increase the fares even more! And along with that perhaps now we don’t even need to wait more than a minute for a cab compared to the impressive average of 6 minutes that Lemon Lim is boasting about.

Addendum

The last cabbie I chat with told me… a Toyota Crown’s rental is about $92 a day and I heard the new Sonatas are more than $100. For an income of $318, 1/3 of that goes to pay the company renting them the cab. Now, if I am not wrong, COE prices has come down quite a bit compared to several years ago… do we see a comparative drop in rental to assist the cabbies?

So much for having done all they could to help cabbies.

Cometh The Bear?

One comment

The Straits Times Index is East Asia’s ‘best’ performing market, beating the rest of the markets by leading them in falling 6.03%.

The lack of confidence in the stimulus package released by the Bush Administration Regime in resuscitating the U.S. economy is the main cause of the fall, coupled with a Chinese warning on the sub-prime exposure of major Chinese banks like the Bank of China and the Industrial & Commerce Bank.

Is the Bear here to stay?

INDEX Mkt Close Change % Change
SSE A SHARE IDX 5157.45 -279.43 -5.14%
NIKKEI 225 INDEX 13325.94 -535.35 -3.86%
HANG SENG INDEX 23818.86 -1383.01 -5.49%
IDX INDEX 2485.88 -125.25 -4.80%
KOSPI 1683.56 -51.16 -2.95%
PSEi 3152.30 -16.00 -0.51%
THAILAND SET 766.53 -23.14 -2.93%
TAIWAN WEIGHTED 8110.20 -74.45 -0.91%
VIETNAM INDEX 833.88 -13.17 -1.55%
KLSE COMPOSITE 1408.60 -30.89 -2.15%
STRAITS TIMES INDEX 2917.15 -187.10 -6.03%

[Fiction] Transport Operators Doing Their All To Help Cabbies…

4 comments

MRT services between Pasir Ris and Tanah Merah stations disrupted
By Luan ZooPom, Channel NelsonAsia Posted: 21 January 2008 1112 hrs

There are no westbound and eastbound train services between Pasir Ris and Tanah Merah MRT Stations this morning.

SickMRT says the disruption was part of SickMRT’s efforts to help cabbies increase ridership ever since the taxi fare hike last December. SickMRT reiterated that the operator will always do all it could to assist cabbies.

Meantime, as the first eastbound train departing Tanah Merah Station at 5.16am was the first to be affected, this also means an increase in cab bookings due to the lack of cabs in the eastern area, which has proven to be a windfall for both DisComfort Mango and SickMRT.

Whether this has proven to be a success is under evaluation and more such disruptions maybe considered in the future, with the next in either the Yishun – Woodlands and Jurong East – Boon Lay stretch during the morning peak hours and the Tanjong Pagar – City Hall stretch during the evening peak hours.

Also, with the increase in taxis going into town during this period, ERP collections is also expected to spike today. The transport operators will take this as part of their corporate responsibility to the nation and consider this a manner of contributing to the revenue of the nation. If all goes well, the transport operators expects to contribute up to 5% of the nations ERP contribution by 2020 through increase ridership in cabs.

Back to using Mozilla Thunderbird’s RSS reader again…

11 comments

I have grown increasingly disappointed with the postings making to Top 10 in ping.sg. The titles are either outrageous or borderline scandalous, or they would come repeatedly from certain bloggers whose posts leave one wondering why they generated so much interest or what makes the literary skills of the blogger so impressive.

I had a chat with Chillycraps over this and one of us have gotten disillusioned enough to consider quitting ping.sg entirely. The things we discussed were nothing new, such as the removal of the Top 10 entirely, as the most direct and effective means to downgrade the value of pongs, and reducing its effect in being some kind of click magnet for those money crazed ‘bloggers’. We talked about upgrading the search feature to allow searching by date, pingster name, and then sorting them by either time, or pongs. The idea was simply: to completely eliminate the importance of pongs and the side effect the Top 10 being a magnet for clicks..

We also talked about how the influx of new users to ping.sg – a testimony of Uzyn’s success – caused a drop in the standards of the posts made, and the possibility that some quality postings may now languish ‘unponged’ amidst the flood of postings. That was when we also touched on the matter of why a sudden deluge of postings at one go from a blogger can be irritating, especially when the postings are completely devoid of personal opinion or write-ups but just a redirection to certain links. The fact is that it simply just push everyone else’s post down to another page before they are even noticed.

So, we come to the conclusion that the Top 10 feature is as good as defunct, and the increase in pings may have in fact diminished the effectiveness of ping.sg as an avenue to access good blog posts, and completely eliminate it as a means to keep updated with posts from our friends.

Thus, I conclude that the situation has deteriorated to the point where I should revert back to the use of my trusty Mozilla Thunderbird RSS Reader. It’s definitely a far more effective way to filter out undesirables compared to clicking the [-] on them in ping.sg. The only people on it will always be the people I want to read. There will be no chronic payperpost bloggers, fiction writers wannabes, and warts of all sorts.

Anyway, we are anxiously waiting for Uzyn to release an upgraded version of ping.sg amidst his tight work schedule. We hope the new version will eliminate some of these annoyances. So, Chillycraps and I are not quitting ping.sg just yet. (I am sure that’s to the disappointment of some.)

Here’s my preliminary list of pingsters added to RSS so I won’t miss anything when these people have posted. I doubt anyone is (or would actually be) concerned if they are not on the list. After all my opinion is insignificant anyway.

  1. Aaron Peng
  2. Alice
  3. Bobo
  4. Chillycraps
  5. DK
  6. InsanePoly
  7. Malique
  8. Nicole
  9. Pink
  10. Ridzuan
  11. Rude Singaporeans
  12. Sheylara
  13. Simply Jean
  14. Tstar
  15. Xinyun
  16. Snowbiscuit

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