Motorists will have to pay more to use the Eastbound ECP (Marina South) and the slip road from Ophir Road.

From November 3, ERP (Electronic Road Pricing) rates for two gantries will be increased by 50 per cent to $1.50, announced the Land Transport Authority (LTA) today.

Currently, ERP rates for both gantries stand at $1.00. The rates for the other gantries will remain unchanged.

ERP will also be implemented along the PIE (Westbound) before Eunos Link with effect from Nov 3.

From 7.00am to 7.30am, motorists will have to pay $2.00. From 7.30am to 8.00am, they will only have to pay $1.00. According to LTA, traffic speeds along the stretch have fallen below the threshold levels.

LTA reviews the traffic conditions on the expressways and roads every quarterly and for the June and December school holidays.

- This news got my friends fuming mad as the Government had calculated the Road Tax versus ERP fees previously did not account for more additional charges with flexibility by LTA.

It’s is true that the Government had cut the road tax charges but it the discount may not cover the future increase in ERP charges hence the total charges will go up significantly based on usage instead of ownership.

This means the Government will charge you more based on usage of roads less so for ownership.

The COE system did not really bring the number of cars in Singapore down due to over estimation of number of scrapped cars and over supplying of COE.

My proposal for the future of car ownership is the following.

1. Ride bicycle.
2. Ride Bus
3. Ride MRT
4. Privatize LTA
5. Fine LTA for every traffic jams created because of over supply of COE.
6. Sing karaoke while trapped in jams, record it and upload to youtube.
7. Reduce the number of COE issued based on REAL scrapped numbers of the previous year instead of using estimation.
8. Give bonus to scrap vehicles like Road Tax discount or Free tires or something.

This coincide with public transport woes, the jam in public transport is seriously affecting morales of workers in Singapore and they can’t possibly go to work on time with such jams.

Problems such as

1. Unable to squeeze onto train and have to wait for many trains before able to board
2. Unable to board buses too and have to wait for long time before people can board a bus.
3. Taxi surcharges is too high, taxi exploited surcharges making themselve “unavailable” during peak hours to force people to phone booking them with additional charges.

Solutions suggested

1. Make public transport work 24 hours on weekdays – this is to make flexible working hours more easier to achieve.
2. Give people incentive to go on flexible hours working status like cheaper bus/mrt rides during off peak hours (early morning or late at night)
3. Make bicycle lane more user friendly for electric bicycle to zoom around safely.
4. Encourage work from home with incentives like tax breaks and higher GST hand out.
5. Quit and die…ahhhhhhhhhh haha…

Tweet This Post

SingTel fixed-line telephone customers will soon have to pay an additional $10 a year in subscription rates. The revision, starting from 1 January 2009, will represent an increase of 83 cents a month.

This is the first rate revision by Singtel in 18 years for its fixed-line telephone subscription and call charges.

With the revision, residential customers will now pay $110 per annum and business customers will pay $160.

Call charges will increase to 0.8 cents from 0.7 cents per 30-second block during peak hours and per 60-second block during off-peak hours.

To reflect changes in call traffic patterns, peak hours will also be revised to 9am to 7pm from 8am to 6pm, Mondays to Fridays. Saturdays, Sundays and Public Holidays are off-peak.

The new rates will translate to an additional cost of not more than $1.50 a month for most customers.

Mr Allen Lew, SingTel?s CEO Singapore, said: ?We have held off rate revisions for 18 years despite rising costs. Over the years, the two main cost components, manpower and materials, have increased substantially. The recent rapid increase in utility costs has also pushed up our running costs.??

Mr Lew stressed that with this adjustment, SingTel’s charges still remains one of the lowest in the region.

Read the full article at AsiaOne News

- Singtel is shooting their own foot by raising fees now when the economy is bad, there are so many alternatives out there that many people can simply move on to other service providers like Starhub which provide FREE telephone over their broad band connection.

Skype and other Voice Over Internet Service Provider can easily replace this void in a sweep across the market. Skype users can voice call another skype users for free when both are online at the same time…and pay a relatively low charges for toll charges if calling to mobile phones.

Singtel may inevitabily have to either lower the price of their land lines services or totally lose the land line market share when the new IT Generation Z comes out and makes land lines the thing of the past.

It’s time to head to the malls to buy that wireless Skype phone today!

I bet most electronic shops will hear more “ka-chin” sound from their register soon!

Tweet This Post

On average, all SP Services customers will face a 21.89 per cent increase.

For the period from October 1 to December 31, tariffs have been pegged to a higher “forward fuel oil price” of S$155.14 per barrel.

This price is 38.06 per cent higher than the S$112.35 per barrel in this current quarter.

The electricity tariff is reviewed quarterly and adjusted in line with fluctuations in the cost of electricity, and approved by the Energy Market Authority.

At a news conference on Monday, the Authority’s chief executive Khoo Chin Hean said that the increase is the highest so far this year.

-I had plotted the graph below to reflect the real movement of the electricity tariff comparing to the ones provide by SPServices.
Hopefully this will wake up more people to conserve electricity not only to cut cost but also to prepare for more spikes ahead.

It will take so much more to convince family member to reduce consumption without the above graph. Hopefully we can live with less air conditioning, less wastage of electricity and more outdoor activities.

Anyone interested in researching on solar laptops?

According to AsiaOne News:

FROM tomorrow(1st October 2008), taxi driver Amir Hamzah will keep his water heater switched off, and take cold showers instead.

That’s when the highest electricity tariffs since 2001 will kick in, and Mr Amir, 33, his wife and three-year-old son – who live in a five-room flat in Sengkang – could end up paying almost $23 more a month for electricity.

“We will try and save on electricity as much as we can, and the water heater uses a lot of it,” he told my paper.

The latest tariffs, announced by SP Services yesterday, mean households will need to pay 30 cents per kWh of electricity, an increase of about 5 cents over the existing tariff of about 25 cents per kWh.

Electricity prices have been rising every quarter since last July.

The latest hike was due to higher forward fuel-oil prices for the last quarter of the year, said the Energy Market Authority (see box).

With the increase, the total utilities bill for families in oneto three-room flats will go up by between $90 and $223 thi year.

However, they will receive rebates of between $310 and $330 this year, which will more than offset the rise, said EMA chief executive Khoo Chin Hean.

Those in larger flats will pay between $316 and $433 more in total for utilities this year, but will get rebates of between $130 and $295.

Fuel costs make up 60 per cent of electricity tariffs, with the remainder coming from the cost of transmitting electricity, as well as machinery and equipment costs, among others.

Since 2004, electricity tariffs have been pegged to forward oil prices, instead of spot prices as was the case before, said Mr Khoo.

Pegging tariffs to spot prices makes electricity prices very volatile, he explained.

Read the full article at AsiaOne News

- There should be a correction, electricity prices had been rising since 2001 instead of since last july….

Tweet This Post

TRANSPORT operators SBS Transit and SMRT Corp are submitting applications for fare hikes later on Friday, but insiders are not holding their breath for any measurable rise.

This is because the Public Transport Council (PTC) declared last month that fare adjustments this year were likely to be far smaller than last year’s average 1.8 per cent increase.

PTC chairman Gerard Ee has said that keeping the rise ‘below one per cent‘ was a distinct possibility.

This, in part, has to do with a ‘redistribution’ of fares, when commuters who make transfers during their journeys will pay less than they do today.

- I have that weird feelings that this press release had done the usual “misdirection” again as most news in Singapore does. First they tell you the “truth” and then divert your attention to another positive yet unimportant information.

This so call “balanced” reporting does the public no justice as the eventual hike in fares will 100% affect BOTH direct & transfer journeys regardless what they tried to “brew the positive propaganda” to the readers.

WTF!? How can anyone believe this bullshit?? How can a hike in fares in the future can be cheaper if commuter makes transfer during their journeys?!?

I do not blame the journalist that works in the publishing company owned by the Government as they can “whitewash” any bad news anytime.

Let me try this style of writing…a bit.

“XXXX Country’s inflation surges to new 23-year high yet many find it the best opportunity instead! Read more…”

Ok, enough said.

Tweet This Post

TO GIVE motorists a smoother ride and better manage traffic congestion, the Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) charges will be based on a new formula, which will kick in earlier when traffic speeds fall below the optimal range.

The base rate will also go up to $2, from the current $1, and each subsequent jump will be $1, instead of 50 cents now.

These changes announced by Transport Minister Raymond Lim on Wednesday, along with the addition of 16 ERP gantries, are aimed at easing congestion in the city area, as well as on major roads island-wide.

Not only are more vehicles on the roads, but motorists are also earning more these days compared to 10 years ago when Singapore introduced its world-first system of managing traffic by charging for road usage.

Current charges are just not hitting motorists’ pockets hard enough to keep enough of them away.

The result: frequent increases to ERP rates to keep traffic flowing – nine in 2006 and 25 last year. The year-long land transport review figured enough was enough.

Under the new formula, ERP charges will kick in when, in line with international practice, just over 15 per cent of vehicles cannot go at what traffic engineers consider the best possible speed.

The current threshold speeds, set 10 years ago, are 45 kph on expressways and 20 kph on major roads.

But motorists still find themselves getting caught in slow traffic, and even experiencing ‘stop-start’ conditions, despite fine weather, and with no accident in sight, said Mr Lim.

The current threshold speeds are closed to the point where traffic flow can deteriorate rapidly to what traffic engineers call the ‘unstable zone’, leading to ‘stop-start’ traffic flow.

‘This is undesirable and we need to create a buffer to ensure better traffic conditions,’ said the minister.

To address this, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) will no longer use average travelling speeds to determine ERP rate changes.

Instead, it will use the speed taken at the 85 percentile level, which will assure motorists of smooth travel on ERP-priced roads at least 85 per cent of the time.

The new formula, as well as the higher charges, will be phased in from July in the Central Business District (CBD) and Orchard Road, and then to other roads in due time.

The number of gantries will also go up in phases, from 55 now, to 60 in April, 65 in July and 71 in November.

Mr Lim said from feedback, motorists are willing to pay ERP charges if they can benefit from it.

‘The changes will improve the effectiveness of the ERP system, so that each time ERP rates are adjusted, motorists who still choose to drive on these roads would see visible improvement in traffic flows,’ said the minister.

On the five new gantries coming up in the CBD to discourage motorists from cutting through the already packed Suntec City, Bugis and Marina Square shopping areas, Mr Lim said speeds on major roads in the city area have fallen by more than 25 per cent.

For example, a motorist crossing the city from Bugis to Chinatown in the evening enjoyed travelling speeds of 25 kph five years ago. Today, the speeds have fallen by almost 30 per cent to 18 kph.

At major cross junctions between North Bridge Road and Bras Basah Road, as well as South Bridge Road and Cross Street, the build-up of traffic has resulted in motorists having to wait for three or more traffic light changes before they are able to cross the junctions.

‘We cannot let conditions deteriorate further,’ said Mr Lim.

The expected increase in ERP revenue will be about $70 million a year.

- Ouch! The strange burning sensation at someone’s pocket…well it’s not mine yet as the charges don’t applies to MRT for the moment haha…but the public transport fees are going up soon if the LTA approve the latest revision of fee hikes…(roll eyes up…to imitate fainting)

Tweet This Post

SINGAPORE : Households and businesses in Singapore will have to pay more for electricity from next year.

SP Services said tariffs will be going up from the first quarter of 2008.

A statement released on Wednesday showed that the new rates will hit a six—year high for households and small businesses.

SP Services attributed the higher cost of electricity to higher fuel prices.

On average, the tariffs will go up by 5.94 percent. This translates into an increase of about S$1.30 in the monthly bill of households staying in one—room flats.

Residents of 5—room flat units are likely to pay about S$5.50 more each month.

The rates are reviewed and adjusted according to fluctuating electricity costs every quarter, and they have been approved by industry regulator, the Energy Market Authority

According to The Straits Times:

Fuel prices drive up electricity tariffs

FROM next month, electricity tariffs will go up nearly 6 per cent, to 22.62 cents per kilowatt-hour (kwh).

This is the highest price hike since 2001. The revision is the result of soaring fuel prices, said Singapore Power which released the January to March tariff on Wednesday.

The 1.24 cents per kwh increase works out to between $1.30 and $5.50 a month for one- to five-room HDB flats.

Between Jan 1 and March 31 next year, Singapore Power expects fuel prices to go up by some 10.5 per cent, from $87.46 per barrel to $96.64 (US$66.28) a barrel.

Electricity prices are adjusted every three months. The last increase was made for the October-to-December quarter where electricity costs went up between $1 to $4.20 a month for one- to five-room HDB flats.

Members of Parliament The Straits Times spoke to agreed that with the rising fuel oil prices, the electricity tariff hike is inevitable.

Dr Lily Neo, an MP for Jalan Besar GRC, said lower-income families and the elderly ‘will definitely feel the pinch’.

She noted: ‘Already, many don’t switch on the lights at night to save the extra few cents. What we can do is offer financial help such as NTUC vouchers and food and grocery vouchers to tide them over.’

Read the full story in Thursday’s edition of The Straits Times.

At www.spservices.com.sg, you can read all their latest news release at the news room.

Download the PDF News Release for 26 December 2007.

For 22.62 cents per kilowatt-hour new tariff means for every kilowatt-hour electricity used you pay 22.62 cents.

The National Average consumption of electricity is 393kWh which means average bills paying right now for most Singaporeans is 393 x 22.62 cents = $88.90 excluding water, sanitation and GST. Total national average plus everything should around $100 to $150 plus minus depending on how much you use.

Currently the electricity tariff is “regulated” and only changes quarterly (every 3 months) on a back ward revision on the tariff to adjust accordingly base on cost of fuel and demand. If previous 3 months is under-charged then the tariff will hike up and goes down if over-charged.

After 2009, the “Pay-As-You-Use” system will be implemented in a open and deregulated tariff system. They call these new users “Contestable” Users and the tariff will be traded by EMC (Energy Market Company) that will trade electricity base on demand and supply, cost of fuel and other speculative factors.

The benefits of more competition in the open market supposedly should have cheaper electricity tariff ($/kWh) and better services when consumer buy contracts from various licensed electricity retailers like Seraya, Senoko, Keppel , Sembcorp, Tuas and possibly other competitors like Island Power.

The problems is that even with competitive pricing plans much like M1, Starhub and Singtel…you cannot control the cost of fuel to generate electricity which currently uses 80% natural gas and the rest is expensive oil base products like bitumen (Tar Sands) and etc.

Any demand disruption like a black out or oil disruption in the middle east will cause electricity tariff to spike within 30 minutes (the intervals for electricity trading). This will cause unsuspecting users much pain in their pockets if they do not know about the disruption and continued to use the electricity at a much higher cost.

All these might change depending on the pricing plans you might purchase after 2009, there might not be even a “full deregulation” of the electricity market if the initial test of the system fails to provide cheaper prices for household consumers for the beta testers.

Enron Energy marketing company collapsed previously because of rampant trading of electrical tariff and had caused Californians much hardship. The frequent high spikes of electricity tariff caused by disruption of power supply due to frequent forest fire and maintenance of power plants. There are many insider cover ups of losses and other unspecific fraudulent accounting practices that caused the collapsed of Enron but we must not be complacent when following blindly into similar US Style deregulation of electricity market.

Deregulation means no more control from government and it will induce speculating trading and also unseen market forces to “steal and plunder” the money of the people through trading of electricity.

Tweet This Post

SINGAPOREANS should brace themselves for a sharp spike in food prices starting from New Years’ Day.

Expect to pay much more for anything from curry puffs to ice cream.

This is because wholesalers are set to raise prices for supplies to hotels and hawkers centres by as much as 10 per cent, and they in turn, are likely to pass the increases to customers.

The rises are a direct result of intense global demand – particularly from the developing world – for agricultural produce.

Many suppliers are also renewing thier contracts with wholesalers and distributors, which end on Dec 31, and will factor in the higher prices.

These long-term contracts have helped control prices to wholesalers and distributors but once they expire, it could be open slather for wholesalers and retailers.

‘When January comes, there’ll be a huge price increase, as some of our raw materials we’ve locked in for several months. Once the contract is over, we’re on a new price,’ said Mr Timothy Chan, general manager of Polar Holdings.

Tweet This Post

HIGHER taxi fares are keeping some commuters away this festive season.

ComfortDelgro, largest taxi operator here with 15,000 taxis, saw a 10 per cent drop in all call bookings on Monday, the first day of the increased fares.

SMRT, the second largest operator with 3,000 taxis, also received 200 fewer calls during Monday’s morning peak hours from 7am to 9am.

A spokesman, however, said that bookings went back to normal for the rest of the day. SMRT’s fall in bookings comes despite them not raising fares till Friday.

One commuter who decided to stay off cabs on Tuesday was Ms Shianna Tan, 28, shipping officer. She normally takes a taxi from her home in Aljunied to her workplace in Changi Industrial Park to work by 8.30am.

‘I used to take cabs by myself, then I tried to find someone to share a cab with me to save cost, but now I’ve just decided to stop taking taxis. It’s just too expensive,’ she said.

ComfortDelgro is the first among the six taxi companies to raise cab fares.

Flagdowns have gone up from $2.50 to $2.80 and the metered fares are up 20 cents for every 385m, compared to 10 cents for every 210m.

The city surcharge has also tripled from $1 to $3 between 5pm and midnight.

And peak hour premiums, which affect those heading to work in the morning and those heading home after office hours, is now 35 per cent of the metered fare compared to $2 flat fee.

SMRT, Premier, Trans-cab and Smart taxis will be raising their fares within the next two weeks. Prime taxis, the newest player in the industry, will be increasing only its city surcharge.

Tweet This Post

SINGAPORE’S second-largest taxi operator SMRT will raise taxi fares from Dec 21, four days after leading rival ComfortDelGro announced it would up cab fares by at least 10 per cent and as much as 50 per cent from next Monday.

SMRT, which has 3,000 taxis to ComfortDelGro’s fleet of 15,000, said in a statement on Friday that the hikes are to mitigate higher operating costs due to rising fuel prices.

It said the changes include raising minimum starting fares by 30 cents to $2.80 and tripling the surcharge from $1 to $3 for taxis entering the Central Business District after 5 pm, in line with the hikes made by ComfortDelGro.

Howrever, booking fees will be reduced by 50 cents during the peak hours, and surcharges for peak period, late-night and CBD will also be revised.

Mr Lo Chee Wen, Vice President of SMRT Taxis, said: ‘Given today’s fuel prices and rising cost of goods and services, the new fares are necessary to reflect the increasing operating costs faced by our taxi partners.’

To help hease the pressures of taxi operators, he said the rental rates will remain unchanged.

Taxi firms have been hurt by high oil prices , which traded above US$92 (S$133) a barrel on Friday after a record near US$100 last month.

- Another and another and another, we are going take in as many hike in a year as possible. This probably will be the Guinness’s World Record of a country accepting hikes without a hint of frustration. We are the most accepting population in the world!! YAY!

Well, to be honest…we did suffer less then many other countries in terms of inflation and others but soon everyone will suffer the same. Now is the time to look forward and prepare for higher cost of utilities by using renewable energies!

Tweet This Post