Maintenance and repair

2.78 One of the most typical services for which governments turn to open competition is maintenance and repair service. For minor repairs of solid waste collection trucks, several quotations from private workshops are obtained within a matter of hours, and the repair job is given to the lowest qualified bidder. For example, even though Bangkok operates a central garage for major repair and overhaul of the city's entire fleet of rolling stock, equipment is sent by the districts to private workshops for minor repairs. The same situation occurs in Seoul (11). Both cities have enormous traffic congestion problems, and it can take hours to drive across the city. It is expeditious and generally less expensive to have a minor repair done locally, in the vicinity of each district office, than to send it to the central garage.