[sustran] Re: Rail or bus

[Jonathan E. D. Richmond]

Actually, there is a very good answer: Do honest and unbiased evaluation
up-front. This virtually never happens.

I see no case for separating capital and operating accounts. Money is
money. Paying off capital creates a bias towards capital-intensive
projects and gets in the way of many low-cost non capital advances. Quite
apart from the fact that this leads to a tendency to expensive projects,
there is a special need i nthe developing world to consider
labour-intensive projects, given the essential need for employment.

                                                 --Jonathan


On Thu, 6 May 2004, Jain Alok wrote:

> I fully agree that skytrain alone cannot solve urban transport problems of
> Bangkok. It will take much more than that.
>
> Though in principle, I support the idea of somebody providing the capital
> for such projects and essentially writing it off (against possibly the
> greater economic benefits to the community which cannot be directly realised
> to the operating company) but in third world countries availability of the
> capital is a big issue to deal with. Either a new type of lending model be
> developed (may be instead of loading capital/depreciation and interest
> upfront on the project, it should be delayed at a time where economic
> benefits are actually expected to have accrued to certain threshold) or
> capital intensive projects can never go ahead.
>
> Difficult questions with no easy answers!!!
>
> Alok
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Karl Fjellstrom [mailto:karl at dnet.net.id]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2004 4:20 PM
> To: 'Asia and the Pacific sustainable transport'
> Subject: [sustran] Re: Rail or bus
>
>
> Dear Alok,
>
> Jonathan's right... For very short trips the fares are similar. (Though the
> minimum skytrain fare gets you 1 station, the minimum bus fare gets you
> 8km.) But for a normal public transport trip of say 2 to 12km the skytrain
> is a factor of 1.5 to 5 times more expensive than the same length trip by
> a/c bus even with monthly pass discounts for the skytrain factored in.
> Factor in longer bus routes and hence less transfers and the difference is
> even greater. Microbus is a special case as it's a flat 20 baht fare but
> people tend only to use this for long trips so it still works out a lot
> cheaper per km.
>
> Sorry to opine further on such a well informed list, but going back to where
> we started: we can't simply attribute the skytrain's problems to the routing
> of the buses, and argue that if this could only be solved everyone could
> then be 'living happily thereafter' as you put it. I only reacted to your
> comments on the fares not to be pedantic but because I've sat through
> presentations by skytrain executives who trot out exactly this kind of
> specious argument and then in the next sentence point out that the govt
> should pay for extensions to the system. E.g. a top skytrain executive
> argued with a straight face in Mar-03 in a presentation that (paraphrasing)
> the beauty of the skytrain is that this kind of rail system extended
> city-wide means that we can solve Bangkok's urban transport problems without
> needing to take the politically unpalatable step of restricting cars....
>
> As said, I think the skytrain is a great system even though the operators
> spend so much time in bankruptcy court negotiations, and there may well be a
> very good case to extend the system with public funds. And I'd support
> skytrain extensions and other rail metro systems in Bangkok provided they
> were based on a proper analysis considering all options (including bus-based
> options such as BRT).
>
> Best regards, karl
>
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-----

Jonathan E. D. Richmond                               02 524-5510 (office)
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