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Following is a question by the Hon Andrew Cheng and a reply by the Secretary for Transport, Mr Nicholas Ng, in the Legislative Council today (May 17):

Question :

At present, in stipulating the fares of franchised bus routes, the authority concerned classifies individual routes into groups before considering such factors as journey distance and whether air-conditioned buses should be deployed to provide services. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council of:

(a) the criteria used for determining the respective groups to which the individual routes operated by the Kowloon Motor Bus Company (1933) Limited belong, especially in regard to Kowloon urban routes, New Territories urban routes, New Territories rural routes or New Territories recreation routes;

(b) the criteria used for determining the respective groups to which individual routes operated by other franchised bus companies belong, in regard to urban routes, suburban routes, New Territories routes or recreation routes; and

(c) the time when these criteria were first adopted and whether it will review these criteria; if so, of the timetable; if not, the reasons for that?

Reply:

Madam President,

In determining the fares of franchised bus routes, the following factors will be taken into account -

(a) journey distance of the route - the fare scales of franchised bus companies are divided into distance bands and different fares may be charged according to different distance bands;

(b) service nature of the route - there may be a fare differential for routes of a special service nature. For example, a higher fare may be charged for the following services :

(i) Express routes - the fares may be higher to reflect the added value for the time saving because of shorter journey time;

(ii) Cross harbour routes - there would be a fare premium for routes passing through the cross harbour tunnels; and

(iii) Recreation routes and Racecourse routes - these are special services and the fares may be higher to reflect the cost of providing the services;

(c) geographical areas to be served by the route - routes serving different geographical areas may have different characteristics and hence the cost of the service may be different. For example, routes serving the Mid-Levels on Hong Kong Island have higher operating costs as the service is run at a gradient. A higher fare may be charged to reflect the cost factor;

(d) bus type to be deployed - the cost of providing air-conditioned services is higher than non air-conditioned services and therefore the fares for air-conditioned routes may be higher;

(e) passenger demand pattern - different fares may be charged for different routes to reflect the cost of providing the particular service. For example :

(i) rural routes which mainly serve remote areas in the New Territories where the population is relatively low may charge higher fares than urban routes; and

(ii) the passenger demand pattern of cross harbour routes from the New Territories including new towns is different from that of cross harbour routes from Kowloon and this would have cost implications. Generally speaking, cross harbour routes from the New Territories and new towns have the following characteristics which would increase the cost of providing the services, and hence the fares of these routes may be higher :

- the routes have fewer short distance passengers;

- the passenger demand during non-peak period is very low compared with other cross harbour routes; and

- for the peak period, only one bound has a high demand and the reverse bound has very few passengers; and

(f) other relevant considerations, including the historical development of the fare scale of different route groups.

On the basis of the above factors, franchised bus routes are classified into different route groups under the bus fare scale to reflect the route characteristics and to facilitate easy identification of the route types. At present, the routes of the Kowloon Motor Bus Company (1933) Limited are classified into 25 route groups under its bus fare scale, whereas the routes of New World First Bus Services Limited (NWFB) and Citybus Limited are classified into 11 and 13 route groups respectively.

Route groups have existed since the early years of franchised bus operation. The existing groupings are developed over the years in line with the development of Hong Kong and they are reviewed from time to time. For example, the delineation of route groups for the Hong Kong Island service as applied to the China Motor Bus Company Limited before its bus franchise ended was reviewed in 1998, as a result of which the classification of the relevant route groups has been simplified under the bus fare scale of NWFB. We will continue to examine the possibility of further simplifying the route groupings when the opportunity arises.

End/Wednesday, May 17, 2000

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