Controlling Traffic

They have this signs at the carpark entrance/exit of most buildings.

It is the Capital's scheme to reduce traffic on the roads. Today, car license plate number ending with and 3 or 8 will not be allowed on the streets.

Tomorrow it will be license plate number ending with a 4 or 9.

In other words, 2 out of every 10 vehicles will be ordered off the streets everyday. That's a 20% reduction of traffic right there and then.

Personally, I felt that this measure is a tad too knee-jerk and it does not affect the rich and elite.

The rich and elite will simply go ahead and buy more cars with different license plate numbers to be used on different days.

The average joe who can only afford that one car will be the ones affected.

This brings us to our own COE bidding system which was intended to control the car population. In a way, by restricting the number of new car registrations, you can control the population of the cars but I personally feel that the bidding system is flawed as it too affects the average joe unfairly.

The current bidding system is a variant of the Dutch auction system where the payment is the amount of the lowest qualified bid.

See table below for an illustration:

If Only 4 COEs Were Awarded...	COE To Pay Under Current System	COE To Pay Under WYBIWYP System
Bidder 1 bids $30,000	$30,000	$30,000
Bidder 2 bids $40,000	$30,000	$40,000
Bidder 3 bids $10,000	Unsuccessful	Unsuccessful
Bidder 4 bids $120,000	$30,000	$120,000
Bidder 5 bids $1,000,000	$30,000	$1,000,000

Regardless of how much you bid, you pay only the lowest qualified bid and in my example, it is $30,000.

Now $30,000 is a lot of money for many of us but it is mere pocket change for the rich and elite who could easily put up more up front and then just end up paying only $30,000 when the results are announced, with the balance refunded.

I feel that the What-You-Bid-Is-What-You-Pay system is a fairer one as it prevents the rich and elite from throwing money in your face.

Punish those who bid irresponsibly. If you backside itchy and bid $1,000,000, then in all fairness, that should be the price of your COE upon your successful bid.

So don't give me the "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others" bullshit.

- Voxeros