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Following is the transcript of remarks by the Secretary for Transport and Housing, Professor Anthony Cheung Bing-leung, after attending a radio programme today (April 17):
Reporter: Professor Cheung, you've emphasised many times during the programme that ... concessions have been given to the public and ... on the monthly passes. One of the passes is $400 for 40 trips. Unless the passenger is actually crossing the harbour it's not gonna be much use for them. How do you justify that? Is that really a concession?
Secretary for Transport and Housing: That is a concession because until now the MTR Corporation Limited hasn't introduced any such concession ticket for the urban lines. We have various monthly passes for people living in Tung Chung and the North District, for example. In future, under the Monthly Pass Extra scheme if they go to a destination beyond the line covered by the monthly pass they will enjoy 25 per cent discount. So overall we reckon that these monthly pass users will actually benefit a discount from 7 to 22 per cent. That is quite a handsome discount to these passengers.
For the urban areas, yes it is not a monthly pass because it is a ticket that allows the users to enjoy discount for up to 40 rides within 30 days. But for users travelling on journeys beyond fare charge of $10 then they will actually benefit. We reckon that quite a number (of passengers) will be benefit.
Reporter: ... who will be benefiting from taking those trips?
Secretary for Transport and Housing: Overall we think that up to 185,000 passengers using various monthly passes and the future City Saver ticket will benefit.
Reporter: Do you think that the penalty mechanism that you've introduced is tough enough? Many people have criticised that 31 minutes is too long, and $1 million is too small.
Secretary for Transport and Housing: We have a tiered table of penalties. In other words we are not saying that for any delay, service disruption beyond 31 minutes is only subject to $1 million, because the longer the disruption and delay, the higher the penalty will be. Thirty-one minutes is the starting point because if we start from a much lower delay time we are also concerned about whether that would put undue pressure on the front-line repair workers of the MTR Corporation, and whether, in order to meet the time target, they would then sacrifice on the part of safety standards. We also treasure safety very much.
(Please also refer to the Chinese transcript of remarks.)
Ends/Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Issued at HKT 12:19
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