12 July 1989
一九八九年七月十二日
94
HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
香港立法局
towns travelling to the urban areas for work, thus, creating unnecessary hardship for these people and excessive traffic congestion on our roads. Moreover, additional roads and tunnels are not being built in time to dove-tail the increase of the population in various parts of our territory despite the knowledge of massive public and private development taking place there. The traffic congestion, as experienced in the Lion Rock Tunnel, Island Eastern Corridor, Kwai Chung and Tsing Yi areas are patent examples of our lack of foresight. Despite the intensive developments in these regions, it is sad to see that projects to alleviate the traffic congestion cannot be completed in time.
It is important that in the inception stage of preparing our town plans and its subsequent implementation, there should be more effective and closer consultation between various government offices such as Town Planning, Transport Branch, Territorial Development Department and the Lands and Works Branch. Taking this opportunity, whilst the Rural Improvement Strategy is still in its consultative stage, I would urge that these suggestions be carefully considered in the preparation of the local town plans in rural areas which will improve our overall future development efforts in the New Territories.
The Second Comprehensive Transport Study has provided us with the background knowledge of the anticipated growth in our traffic demand with suggestions for a road building programme to alleviate our traffic problems. If we are able to acknowledge our traffic problems earlier and to take timely remedial measures to improve our overall infrastructure, Hong Kong will not then lose out in terms of efficiency. Other Asian countries such as Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand will have very major infrastructure projects to improve their overall efficiency.
With the development of China, we in Hong Kong are benefiting by a significant increase in our re-export and container freight traffic. But, we still see around 12 hours of traffic congestion in the Kwai Chung and Tsing Yi areas. Even if we expand our container terminals and increase our container handling capacity in our container ports, efficiency would not be significantly increased if there is no corresponding improvement to our road system. We would just have long queues of containers leading to the terminals.
With the opening of Lok Ma Chau border crossing and the intensive development in northwest New Territories, there will be a significant growth in our own internal passenger traffic volume and cross-border container traffic. It would be advisable if we can initiate an earlier commitment to projects such as Route 3 and the rail-link for passenger and container freight traffic. Not only