The Bus - What Price Transport?

Some of you may have already figured out that I'm a bit of a nut for public transportation. Well, so labeled. The last two years have been really interesting for the bus system here in Beijing. Let's look at the prices of the bus over the last 2 years.
1) When I moved to Beijing in August 2005, I discovered that there was a bus that went straight from my apartment to my company (magical air-conditioned bus #731) in less than 1.5 hours. At that time, the bus cost 4 yuan.
2) The next step was the introduction of smart cards (finally). You can now just wave your transportation smart card at a machine on all of the buses and it will debit the cost of the trip. (!) To push people to use it, they offered a 20% discount on the bus trip. New cost: 3.2 yuan.
3) Air-conditioned buses used to cost double the price of non-AC buses. This was interesting because the increase of a few yuan was enough to create lots of space on the AC buses while the non-AC were packed to the gills. As one of the better off people in Beijing, I was troubled by the classism but truly enjoyed the luxury. The double cost for AC was removed. New cost: 1.6 yuan.
4) In order to accomplish it's larger goals (more on that in another post), the Beijing government paid off the bus companies to triple the discount for the card to 60%. (!) New cost: 0.8 yuan.

So ... there you have it. My commute cost for the bus has fallen from 4.0 yuan to 0.8 yuan in the space of 2 years. I think it's fairly cool. However, the hidden implications of this reduction are a bit more unsettling. You'll have to wait for that information in a future post. *sorry*