1.19
designed
On the other hand, the MTR Island line has been
within the context of the mass transit system currently
under construction. It would use high capacity trains
similar to those on the system being developed and would
serve a different market to that carried by the tram today.
A large capital investment is required, most of which represents new infra-structure and depends on a large growth
in travel demand to be most cost effective.
1.20
1.21
Light Rail Transit lies between these two. In practice
LRT systems have frequently evolved from the gradual
upgrading of street tramway systems. Light Rail Vehicles
are capable of operating on segregated or unsegregated
street track or on separate rights of way which may not
be grade separated. A single LRT system may thus encompass
a wide variety of rights of way. The purpose of the
evaluation process was to establish whether this potential
adaptability was of any advantage compared with other options given the financial and cost/benefit criteria as well as the
physical constraints and conditions in the Corridor.
Four alternatives were designed so as to be able to evaluate:
(i) the systems previously proposed for the corridor; (ii)
some possible sub-options of them; and (iii) the concept of LRT.
Each alternative included a bus network to cater for the sub-
stantial number of journeys that are relatively unaffected
by the rail based systems. The new highways under construction today, and planned in future, offer opportunities for express
bus operations in a number of instances and this concept
was also included in two of the alternatives evaluated.
1.22
The four principal alternatives developed (Options A-D) are outlined in Figure 2 and summarised in Table 1. In each
case it was assumed that PLB's had been entirely banned
from the corridor. A further option was designed to address
9-