Recent bus accidents prompt me to inquire as to what arrangements the Transport Department has in place to ensure that the 88 CMB routes will be offered only to a bidder who is going to operate safely.
The Government has the ideal opportunity to improve the level of safety for all bus users if they make careful choices in this bidding process. It is not good enough to say: 'It is only a bus service, we expect several accidents.' New bidders from outside Hong Kong will not have safety statistics that are particularly relevant to the Hong Kong situation, so cannot be easily measured on their past performance.
What is important for all bidders though is that they have a watertight safety management system in place, that ensures that they manage their safety and do not let bad practices prevail. The scoring of the bidders should fully account for this.
Our better transport operators should never be allowed by the Government or public opinion to operate as unsafe a service as the buses are allowed to get away with. This represents unfair competition between buses and those better services as it usually, but not always, costs more to run a safe service.
E. F. CHASE Pokfulam
