Dear Reach Administrator,
I believe that under the present situation of relentless rising of fuel and food prices, high inflation and living in uncertain future, many car owners are ever ready and eager to scrap their cars and switch to public transport.
Maintaining a car nowadays is very expensive.
I also believe that car owners are just waiting for some win-win schemes from Land Transport Authority (LTA) to trigger their move.
Recently, LTA has made the first right move to implement cash rebates on Sept 1 when car owners scrap their cars.
I suggest that the second move should be to remove ERP charges for taxi. Such scheme has an extremely strong attraction for car owners to give up the cars apart from those who need the vehicles for their livelihood and the rich. Taxi can give them the option of getting around fast, from point to point and economical. Taking into consideration of the extremely high cost of maintaining a car nowadays, current taxi fares are very reasonable even more so without ERP charges.
The third measure may be to enact regulations so as to make it more difficult financially for prospective buyers.
There are many other measures which MOT and LTA can tweak their rules and policies to attain their objective. But in so doing the Authorities must take into consideration the motorists' interest. Certainly, it should not be punitive in nature such as the coming implementation of more ERP gantries, higher charges and longer operating hours; it is politically incorrect.
WARMEST REGARDS |