TNAG-1074-FCO40-1324-Policy-of-the-Government-of-Hong-Kong-on-education-1981 — Page 60

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XCC(81)28

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usage of the Student travel cards. While reasonably accurate assessments of usage can be made in respect of the ferry companies, NLB and the MTRC (because these operators use turnstiles or tickets), it will be impossible to check usage accurately in respect of HKT, CMB and KMB because of their operating circumstances. Since it is the Government's intention that all the operators listed in paragraph 6 should participate in the scheme although it is acknowledged that it will be difficult to guarantee their acceptance of the level of payment, legal advice is that the Government may impose the new scheme by amending the fare structure s of the bus and ferry companies under existing powers of control over their fare structures. As for the HKT and MTRC, without specific legislation the scheme may only be introduced on HKT by agreement and on the MTRC either by agreement or by direction of the Governor in Council (provided that the MTRC is fully compensated in the event that such direction may require the corporation to act "contrary tỏ prudent commercial principles".) It is proposed that the Government would impose the scheme through alterations to existing fare scales and, would inform the operators concerned by letter that it would be making payments determined annually to the companies. Each operator would also be informed that in the event that it was not satisfied with the level of payment, then it would have recourse to arbitration;" mode

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(viii) the MTRC has indicated that for practical and technical reasons

it will only be able to offer two fare values ($1.00 and $1.50) for student tickets as against five values for adult fares. In some cases this will represent a 50% saving on the price of a full adult fare, but in others the saving could be only 33%, or for very short journeys, nil. The MTRC intends to introduce a system of stored value tickets shortly which will give the bearer an exact 50% reduction on all journeys made (The problems of the MTRC have been noted and it is recommended that the MTRC proposals be accepted, provided that the stored value ticket system can be speedily introduced. Publicity will need to be addressed to this issue);

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(73)

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må babels.ye H&Lua BMd not go i duomen (ix) there have been suggestions that the Government should meet the

cost of the concession currently granted to primary school students under the age of 12. However, it is not considered appropriate to deal with these suggestions in the context of this exercise.

Other Transport Aspects

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Although this scheme will extend a very attractive concession to students, it is not considered likely that it will in itself generate a substantial number of additional trips students will still have to pay a fare to travel, and

trips may be

:

will not have unlimited time to spend on travelling. Somé extra otherwise

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generated, and some students may make longer trips than they would have made (perhaps to the New Territories rather than within the urban area). It is considered that most transport operators will benefit to a limited extent from the scheme, and that the MTR will benefit to a greater extent as the c introduction of the concession would make commercial sense on this more wi

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