Votre Coeur: How the local media always focus on the positive

How the local media always focus on the positive

Posted by Mastermind at 6:52 pm

And I shall focus on the negative instead.

Been reading the news about the upcoming fare hike and wanting to blog about it. But since straits times interactive is for subscribers only, figured it won't be the best source to talk about so will take the today version of the story instead. The actual story can be found here.

For some obvious reasons, the local media managed to report a bad news for the public as if it was good news. Here's some gems I uncovered behind the "congratulations Singaporeans on the upcoming fare hike" article.

#1

In fact, one in five rides — or 23 per cent of some 4 million rides daily — will not be affected by the fare hikes

So that means four in five rides are affected. So who are those not affected? Children/Students with concession pass and National Servicemen with concession pass which may make up over 1 million rides daily. If we take a visit to the Singapore statistics website here and download some statistics on student transport patterns, we find that about 320, 000 students take public transport to school. Assuming that all of them uses concession and they take an average of 4 bus rides per day (gross over-estimation since I did not consider school holidays), I came out with 1.28 million trips from students. Even much less for National servicemen so what happen to at least 2.72 million other trips that will not be affected?

They are cash rides which is already much more expensive in comparison. So tourists who have no reason to buy an EZ-link card would not be hit with the fare increase. In actual fact, Singaporeans who are not affected by the price hike may consist of only one in twenty rides instead. I won't be sure since I don't know how many locals travel by bus with cash payment.

#2

Fares up – but not as much as last year

The council approved the maximum 1.7-per-cent fare hike applied for by both public transport operators. Last year's maximum fare hike application of 2.4 per cent was also approved by the PTC.

So the title of the Todayonline article says "Fares up - but not as much as last year". I'm really impressed with the author for finding a positive to put as the title in an essential tragic news for everyday commuters. We could have look at this in many different negative ways like as follows:

a) Fares up - Total of over 4 percent in two years
b) Fares up - Transport fare increase by maximum twice in two years
c) Fares up - Once Again
d) Fares up - Despite healthy earnings of public transport companies

#3

out of five rides will see a 1-cent fare increase, three in five will see a 2-cent hike, while 16 per cent of all rides will cost 3 cents more.

If you can't convince them that fare hike is good, confuse them. 2/5 + 3/5 = 1. So where did that 16% that will cost 3 cents more? Maybe this is a genuine typo but shouldn't they be a bit more careful with those figures? What if some IMF/World bank big shot picked up a copy of Today at Suntec and found this mathematical mystery embeded in the newstory? Bet they would have a good laugh along with their cup of expresso during breakfast.

#4

To alleviate the impact of such fare hikes on the elderly and needy, both SBS Transit and SMRT have come up with $500,000 worth of transport vouchers

SBS Transit has extended the concession hours for the elderly, a move which will cost an additional $373,000 over the next 12 months.

So the SBS transit and SMRT are paying through their noses to come out with some forms of aids for the needy to help alleviate the impact of such fares? Or is this a publicity act? Let's look at the figures...

In 2005, there are 157 000 households with total income of $1000 or below monthly. If you consider them to be needy, that means the SBS and SMRT prepared to fork out less than $4 per household. Just for comparison, if you work 300 days a year to chalk out 600 trips on bus with $0.01 increase per trip means you pay $6 more a year.

Of course, we all knew that not every needy household will actually receive the transport voucher, that's why people get $20 vouchers instead. (Wonder what happen to the majority of the needy households)

On the other hand, with almost 20 million trips daily, and average of 1 cent increase per trip for 4 in 5 trips would mean $160 000 more income per day or $58.4 million a year (Actually about $50 million if I don't do rounding off but hey, I only consider 1 cent increment okay, so I think is fair!). Now the amount they forked out to help the needy from the increased income seems to be peanuts in comparison. They break even within a week.

#5

"This means that the fare adjustment, which will yield $8.7 million for a full year, will only provide partial relief for the increased cost pressures we face," said SBS Transit spokesperson Tammy Tan.

I wonder if I did my math wrongly or SBS is lying blatantly. I think it will yield at least 2 times more and I don't think they pay such heavy tax that will reduce their yield by that much. It must be a magical figure quote after discounting some money here and there or comparing with operating costs in India or something. I won't know.

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Just for records, I sourced some financial records from the SMRT website for comparison too. Here's a summary of those key findings

a) SMRT earned $27.4 million after tax for first quarter of FY2007 compared to $25.7 million for the 4th quarter of FY2006. That's a 6.6% increase in profits without the fare hike.
b) Total operating expenses increased from $148.9 million to $151.2 million during the same time. That's a 1.5% increase only
c) Compared to first quarter of FY2006, profits went up by 5.7% also
So SMRT is doing great business and bringing in increasing profits without fare hike. So is it really necessary to increase transport fare? Like what the PTC said, there is not reason to reject, nor is there a reason to approve, so they approved. Darn! I'm too lazy to go see what SBS have to offer for their financial reports, I don't want to lose what little confidence I have left of the public transport system by looking at more figures.

Oh, in my simple research on this issue, I found even more depressing news from the statistics that I dug out. Compare to 2000, 2005 saw an 13.6% increase in household in Singapore but the number of families with low household income (below $1000) increased by 35.0% instead. The other end of the great income rift is that families with household income above $10,000 monthly increased by a whooping 46.2%. So the poor Singaporeans are getting poorer will the rich Singaporeans are getting richer in the past five years.

Feeling crappy after looking deep beneath the positive stories that the local media always present. Ignorance is a bliss certainly applies to Singaporeans.

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