There are also another like e.g. renting shops and advertisement spaces etc.

Leong Him Woh’s last blog post..French Riviera Nice

Agree. In an inelastic market like transport (where it’s hard for customers to not use your service/goods because there are few alternatives), any fool can increase profit by raising prices. You basically write your own cheque, when your customers have no choice but to cough up or not travel at all.

The real measure of efficiency (which should be rewarded at the market), really ought to be increased volume of satisfactory transactions at a sustainable cost. Or in other words, their long term profit growth really ought to come from having more customers, and better satisfied customers, without undue increases in business cost. Costs can be lowered or managed through technology, business efficiencies etc. so that the same X dollars of expenditure can give you more and better train services year on year.

The basic fact is that any corporate body out there is liaible to un-profitability. It’s how the market tells you when you’re not doing something right. I therefore fail to see why we should guarantee SMRT profitability year on year as a given. That’s protectionism and it’s regressive.

Mind you the problem of regulating basic privatised services that used to be nationalised has not been satisfactorily resolved in many many places around the world — just look at the mess that British Rail and US healthcare is in…

Leong Him Woh’s last blog post..Ximenting Taipei

Leong Him Woh’s last blog post..Ximenting Taipei

Then de-list it in from the exchange. Let it becomes a truely public company that serves the members of public.

Their challange would then be not how to generate decent profit but how to balance their P/L including improving service standard and efficiency.

Tianhong’s last blog post..Oil price hits record above US$108. Is it really the problem of demand and supply?

Of course, seeing it “going down” is going to be a miracle. SMRT is a service, and service has a price. That’s what Singapore is. A service hub.

Anyway, since SMRT didn’t comply to certain regulations, of course they would be fined by the authority. You did something wrong, you pay for it. Quite simple?

ignorantsoup’s last blog post..The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep Review

If the SMRT shareholders care about profits only, then we can expect the commuters to be screwed all year round. How would the SMRT management improves the quality of their services when it does not spend extra money?

The shareholders need to understand that at the end of the day, the people that create the profits for them are your regular train commuters. Not the management team, not the trains, not the tracks and not the train stations.