What a good start for the new Transport Minister !
On his first day in office, he “ordered Transport Co and the Bangkok Mass Transit Authority to indefinitely delay bus-fare hikes planned for this month and next. Both state enterprises must resubmit documents on their operating costs. “(Nation)
I guess Transport Co and BMTA will rewrite the… same documents… with exactly the same figures. 
Doesn’t matter if they’re loosing money due to higher costs. Someone will pay… later.
I don’t mind hiking bus fares as long as they make the service safer. I believe most Thais would feel the same. Riding buses in Bangkok everyday is basically risking your life. Besides their crumbling conditions, which have costed so many lives in tragic accidents, most bus drivers disregard passenger’s safety and drive it as if they were in a F-1 Grand Prix. Even buses in China’s small town are much safer and in decent condition, let alone their very affordable fares.
You surely have a point regarding the conditions of the buses, and qualifications of drivers.
Delaying hikes, that are justified by higher operational costs (higher prices of diesel and NGV), will indeed worsen the situation. It will be even more difficult to invest.
That’s the drama of subsidy policy : it makes people feel good on short term… But after, usually, they pay double.
People were happy when Thaksin decided to subsidy gasoline prices… Leading to a huge 100 billions hole.
This hole, after, was naturally paid back… by the same people (with a premium on each liter to pay back the Oil Fund).
Thank you, Thaicrisis.
To add up to your input, the attempt to temporarily freeze bus fares is apparently a desperate strategy just to gain popularity from the poor. We need to first bear in mind that only the lower income ride Bangkok buses. The truly middle class either ride costly subways and skytrains for within the city or drive to work.
For the lower income, freezing bus fares only helps them psychologically but not that much in reality. These people usually come from upcountry all over Thailand to find jobs and work in the capital city. Most of them rent cheap, affordable apartments, which can only be found in small, labyrinth-like roads (Soi) of Bangkok. This is because Bangkok lacks city-planning for more than 50 years for the same old reason - CORRUPTION. So it became a nightmare when the economy was booming 20 years ago, causing sprawls across the city. To get to work, they need to ride motorbikes, which cost 15-30 Baht, to the main roads, then pay another 8-20 Baht to the destination, depending on the distance. Some may need to transfer to another bus line and pay another 10-20 Baht to get to the destination. Some may need to ride crumbling, dirty vans to work.
So the public transportation of Bangkok, as well as Thailand, is probably one of the least efficient in the world!
There is no quick fix to this chronic problem. To solve the problem of costly public transportation of Bangkok needs a leader that can get many functions of the national and metropolitan administrations to work together.