Last week, CAN met with senior members of the EPD to take the pulse of the pending AQO review. The most important takeaway from the meeting: the Government needs to hear that the public is ready to bear some of the cost of clean-up before it comes to the table with a subsidy. Obviously, we need to refocus our message during this next phase of our campaign: the public is willing to pay more provided there is equitable cost-sharing between stakeholders, including Government and polluters.
Click here to read what else we learned from the EPD…
Consider becoming a registered smoky vehicle spotter — seriously
SO many people ask us all the time, how can I become a smoky vehicle spotter? Or how can I report smoky vehicles to the EPD? You can report smoky vehicles to the EPD, but unless you are a registered spotter, the EPD has no obligation to follow up your complaint. Here’s the good news: you CAN make a real contribution to clean air in Hong Kong by becoming a smoky vehicle spotter. Two members of CAN recently underwent the EPD’s Saturday morning smoky vehicle training course. We learned that there are approximately 120,000 diesel vehicles in Hong Kong; approximately 5000 registered spotters; and approximately 10,000 smoky vehicles reported by registered spotters, annually. However, only 1,000 of 5,000 spotters are actually active. That means that 1,000 people in Hong Kong are reporting 10,000 offending vehicles per year, a significant percentage of the overall population of diesel vehicles. In other words, each active spotter makes a meaningful contribution to cleaning up roadside emissions in Hong Kong. So, think about it and let us know if you’d like to get registered. Read more about the actual training and registration requirements.
Why it’s so hard to clean up the franchised bus fleet
The franchised bus fleet contains so many old buses because of the combination of two factors: the bus operators do not enjoy a guaranteed rate of return and the Transport Department has a policy of not wanting to raise bus fares (for obvious reasons). As you can imagine, with a regulatory regime like this, everything militates against the acquisition of new buses by operators. How can bus operators possibly buy new buses when they are expected to fully absorb this cost through diminished profits, with no hope of passing on any of these charges to the public or being compensated by the Government. At the same time, what’s the point of privatizing the bus sector if the Government has to subsidize it through a guaranteed rate of return? The whole scenario points to the deficiencies of a public bus fleet operated by private companies. Private bus companies cannot be expected to make investment decisions which take into account the negative externalities to society (i.e., the cost of air pollution and associated health impacts) of operating buses. They will always choose to run their buses as long as possible, no matter how dirty and harmful to the public at large. Thus, a Government subsidy is indispensable to enabling bus companies to purchase cleaner buses earlier. Click here to read the full analysis in Civic Exchange’s recently published paper, Paying For a Cleaner Bus Fleet: How Government can Break the Log Jam.
