Govt funding of public transport

550 buses plus operating costs and salaries of bus drivers for 10 years will be provided by the govt amounting to $1.1b. It is a significant sum to a public listed company, though originally a govt owned business started with tax payer’s money. It was also reported that nearly $70b have so far been doled out to the train operators in infrastructure cost and rolling stocks as well.

And the operators cried shareholder’s interest to see good profits. No doubt the majority shareholder is the govt or govt linked companies, many of the other shareholders are also feeding on the gravy train built with taxpayer’s money and demanding more and more profits.

It can’t be helped for the commuters to be pissed off when the bulk of the capital was taxpayer’s or their money in the first place, and now they have to keep feeding the organizations to feed the shareholders and big bonuses for the top management.

It is high time the govt reclaims the public transport companies and run them as they should be, state owned companies, for the country, people and supporting the rest of the economy. Price it as low as possible, (please assholes, I am not saying that it must be run at a loss) a national service to the people and country. The whole economy also needs an efficient and lowly priced transport system. High transportation cost will spiral into other operating costs and salaries of workers. It will affect the social activities and life of the people as well.

The mission of public transportation has to be relooked at and reformulated to serve the people and country, not just the shareholders.