Position paper 1: On car prices

The local councils should operate free shuttles from your homes to the train and bus stations, as well as within the city -- where you can get from one place to another free by just jumping onto the shuttle. And there should be only five-minute intervals between shuttles at peak time and ten or 15 minutes off-peak.

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

On the one hand, while I agree that car prices in Malaysia are ridiculously expensive, on the other hand I do not agree that cars should be cheap in Malaysia.

I know this sounds contradictory so allow me to explain what I mean.

In the UK, I can buy a brand new BMW that will cost roughly ONE year of my gross salary -- assuming I am earning £22,000-24,000 a year, say, as a chef in a restaurant.

In Malaysia, doing that same job, the same BMW would cost me about twelve years of my salary. That means in, Malaysia, it costs 12 times what it costs in the UK.

So I do not convert the Pound to the Ringgit and worry about the actual cost of the car in Ringgit. I compare my earning capacity to the number of years it would cost to own that car based on that earning level.

Cars should cost about one to two years of your earning capacity and houses about ten years. That would mean you have quality of life.

Now, while cars should be affordable to own, they should be heavily taxed when you drive them. Currently, they are heavily taxed even if you don’t use them and they sit idle in your garage or driveway.

Hence we should implement congestion zones where you pay heavily to drive in these congestion zones but not when you drive on the highways and country roads. And you also pay heavy parking fees when you park in the cities and towns.

Hence, also, cars would be cheap to own but expensive to operate. And the more you drive and park, the more you pay. So it is better you ‘abandon’ your car and use public transport to get where you want to get to.

The local councils should operate free shuttles from your homes to the train and bus stations, as well as within the city -- where you can get from one place to another free by just jumping onto the shuttle. And there should be only five-minute intervals between shuttles at peak time and ten or 15 minutes off-peak.

We must also be very careful about reducing car prices overnight. If you have just spent RM120,000 to buy a new car, you would not want that same car being sold for RM80,000 the following year. That means your RM120,000 car would suddenly become RM50,000 in value. You would expect your (second-hand) car value to be at least RM80,000 but how can it be RM80,000 when you can now buy a brand new one for that same price?

Pakatan Rakyat has made promises about reducing car prices without looking at the implications of that move. Firstly, many Malaysians would see their asset value depreciating drastically. Secondly, we will see many more cars on the road. What we want to see is lesser cars on the road, not more cars. The traffic jams and pollution in Malaysia is so bad that we should discourage rather than encourage Malaysians to drive.

Of course, for all this to happen, we need a more efficient public transport system. And herein lies the problem -- Malaysia’s public transport system sucks.

And am I glad I will not be in the government that needs to worry about all this.

Anyway, the local councils and town planners need to look into this. And this is why we need local council elections. Then we can kick out those councillors who are not doing their job. Currently, local council positions are used as a reward for loyal party supporters.

And herein lies the other problem -- our local councils suck.