Reference points II

Jakarta is a crowded city with a messy transport system. Everybody knows, one thing people claim to know is the solution of Jakarta's bad traffic. Two things might help : reduce the number of people using private cars, move them to an efficient public transport. - Again everybody knows this, the problem is now how can we make people move to public transport.

Its difficult to get people to move from their comfort zone. (1) They need to dispose their Cars/ Motorcycles. (2) One time experience of Bad Public transport is enough to make them moved back to private cars. This has to do with reference point. If our initial depart is a fancy car with good air conditioners, and comfortable leather Seat why should we trade with a Bus (potentialy) packed with people with much more efforts (to climb and walk all the way to the Bus Shelter). Nobody. I think both rational and irrational behavior believers can come to terms with this concept. Simply there is no incentive to move to (this kind of) public transport. what we clearly see nowadays in Jakarta, We took Ojeks or Taxi /cabs to replace our fancy cars, you are geting higher utility than the amount of money you pay. Additional hypothesis : Those of you get used with Cars probably prefer taxi than Ojeks.

There are people who indeed trying realy hard to use Bus-es, or thinking realy hard to move to public transport, the problem with these people is that they tend to procrastinate - I will take my Motor bike today, and take a train next week- and once they ever tried a public transport, their initial reference point did not allow them to value public transport very high. And soon going back to Private vehicles. In short this kind of public transport is not sustainable for homo economicus with inconsistent preference.

these guys seems to agree with me