MTR fares are set to rise by 3.14 percent starting in June, according to reports.
The increase, announced yesterday, was based on the railway operator’s price-setting mechanism.
The MTR corporation, though, said the 3 percent rebate Octopus card users enjoy for six months of every year, will remain in place until 2022-2023, wrote Apple Daily.
As such, the company said Octopus users would not feel the effects in 2018.
The increase follows a freeze on fare rises last year. The freeze, however, followed seven straight years of increases, amounting to a rise of more than 20 percent since 2010, according to the SCMP.
The newspaper spoke to several critics of the move, who noted the MTR’s profitability and demanded the be taken into account.
The MTR Corporation’s chairman, Frederick Ma Si-hang called the increase “reasonable.”
The corporation pointed out that the increase was less than the 11.89 percent jump in the Median Monthly Household income over the last two years, The Standard wrote.
So how exactly did they come up with a 3.14 percent increase? The price adjustment is calculated by adding half of the change of the inflation rate in December, which rose 1.7 percent, with half of the change in transport sector wages, which increased 2.8 percent, minus a deduction of a “productivity factor” of 0.6 percent.
Added to this was the 1.49 percent rate of adjustment from last year, which was held off because it didn’t surpass the 1.5 percent threshold required to trigger an increase.
Concessions remain for children, students and the elderly.
