&
It accepted that taxis, which were even less efficient users of road space than private cars because they travelled without passengers for much of their time on the road and tended to congregate in the highly congested urban areas, had to be controlled by limiting their number and raising fares. The White Paper pointed out that any limitation in the number of private cars without a limit on the number of taxis would add to road congestion if those denied the use of cars switched to an unlimited
supply of taxis. On parking controls the White Paper recognised that at locations threatened by unacceptable levels of road congestion, the supply of parking spaces and the charges for them were crucial in controlling road use by private cars and mentioned that a Working Group had been formed to consider how best to reconcile the need for parking facilities with the need to avoid congestion on surrounding roads.
100.
Soon after the publication of the White Paper the Government commenced work on the implementation of its policy but in the process a number of serious weaknesses developed. These centred around the delays in securing agreement within the Administration to introduce the measures, the failure to implement the policy in a comprehensive and coherent manner and in the creation of uncertainty in respect of the parking and taxi control policies. In the early stages, the importance of speed in introducing the restraint measures was fully understood with a Transport Department discussion paper pointing out in August 1979 that Hong Kong was fortunate in that car ownership had not reached the level of other cities and that it was necessary to introduce the restrictions as soon as possible as it would be difficult to allow unrestrained growth and then at a later date impose very severe restrictions in a belated attempt to recover the situation. Unfortunately, the Government did not act in accordance with this advice and the situation that was predicted later came to pass. In January 1980 proposals for raising first registration tax and annual licence fees were submitted to the Financial Secretary by the Secretary for the Environment (who was then responsible for transport policy matters). However, the Financial Secretary, considering the proposals from the fiscal rather than the transport policy point of view, did not incorporate them in either his 1980 or in his 1981 budgets. Meanwhile, the number of licensed private cars had increased from 150,000 in 1979 to 190,000 in 1981 and it is not clear why the Secretary for the Environment did not act more decisively in dealing with the matter after the setbacks arising from the Financial Secretary's initial decision because it was open to him to put his proposals directly to the Executive Council for consideration. In the event, this is what was done but not until May 1982, by which time the traffic situation had become so bad that more severe measures than might otherwise have been considered necessary were introduced by the Secretary for Transport in order to check the growth of private cars,