THE CARS THAT ATE UP PENANG......

I remember watching a Peter Weir directed film "The cars that ate up Paris." Its a satire on the car owning culture and its unsatiable appetite for new roads and highways. U see no matter how many new roads and how much widening the old roads had undergone....it will never be enough. New roads and highways and better access will attract more developments and more cars and in a very short time...these new roads will soon be crowded and congested again ...spurring more new roads and more road widening...and the cycle goes on and on...

We have to break the car owning culture.... we have to break this habit and save our environment and our open spaces.......before we turn everything into concrete and aphsalt.....

Yet, the federal government is wrongly stimulating and fostering a society and an economy addicted and dependent on cars....by neglecting and ruining the public transport system.....malaysians are compelled to own and use private cars......because public transport is non-existence or is so unreliable....it is almost impossible to use one to commute to and fro from work.....

If we seriously do our maths with regards to car-ownership.....apart from the pyschic pleasure ownership brings and the status it confers; it so wasteful of our resources even at a personal level.

For most office and factory workers (apart from salepeople), our cars are used for about less than 2 hours a day on a weekday and maybe for a total of 8 hours for the weekends..... on the average. Most of the time our cars are sitting in the driveway or in some carpark "literally" wasting away..... We pay roadtax, insurance, interest and depreciation charges on a daily basis...... For eg. the cost of owning a Proton Waja (RM50K) on a daily basis ia around RM 21.30....this excludes running cost such as petrol and repairs, serviceing and parts.... for running costs add another RM10 or RM5 depending on how far u live...it will around RM26 to 30 per day....

(Insurance & road tax=RM 2 per day or RM 730 per year;
Interest charges =RM5.5 per day or RM 2,000 per year (say we borrow RM 40k @ 5%) ;
Depreciation charges = RM 13.70 or R 5,000 per year (RM40,000 in 8 years & scrap value = RM10k)

From the newspapers reports (from Penang at least), the main problem with the Bus services, is the problem of Companies "leasing" out their buses to individual bus drivers....the bus companies cannot afford to pay drivers the pay that they expect....but by leasing the buses out to the drivers, they then act as individual entrepreneurs and hustle for their fare......to maximise their revenue, they ignore the unpopular times and routes and focussing on the most "popular times' and routes ......and as the newspaper reports even to the extent of encroaching into the routes of others........

Surely we can afford to pay a little bit more for a better and more efficient public Transport...its good for the environment and good for our pockets....Government must be prepared to allow bus Companies to earn profits and pay their workers better, so that better services can be provided. If people use their private car less....fuel subsidies will be less....the Government cannot continue to subsidise fuel...it distorts demand ....wrongly allocates resources....is a lose lose situation....

I wonder how Singapore can do it........