COMMUNICATIONS
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one mile. Travel exceeding this distance within the urban area costs 20 cents for any distance. Monthly tickets and school children's tickets at concessionary rates are issued on urban routes. Servicemen in uniform and children under 12 years of age travel at half-fare. Routes to the mid-levels and suburban districts of Hong Kong Island in the south and to the New Territories have higher fares for longer distances. Half-fare passes are also issued for school children on suburban services.
Tram Service. An electric tramway service is operated on Hong Kong Island by Hong Kong Tramways Ltd. The track, the gauge of which is 3 feet, is about 19 miles in length if single tracks are measured. It runs between Kennedy Town and Shau Kei Wan, with a branch line round the race course in Happy Valley. All routes pass through the city of Victoria. The tramcars are four- wheeled double-deckers, with single staircases, and are designed for single-ended working, the termini having turning circles. The operating current is 500 volts direct.
The average daily service of cars run in 1963 was 147. This gave a car every two minutes in each direction on all routes. Through the city area, which is in the centre of the system, the minimum frequency of service was a car every 34 seconds in each direction. The number of passengers carried was just short of 191 million, an increase of nearly two million or one per cent over 1962. The number of miles run was 7.6 million, a decrease of nearly 100,000 miles or 1.2 per cent.
Fares are charged at a flat rate for any distance over any route and are 20 cents first class and 10 cents third class; the maximum length of a route is 63 miles. The company also issues monthly tickets, and concessionary fares are given to children, students and Services personnel. Postmen and policemen on duty and in uniform are carried free of charge.
The Peak Tram Service. The Peak Tramways Company Ltd runs a funicular railway service up the Peak, which rises steeply behind the central district of Victoria. The present haulage system is the same as that of the mining type and has been in use since 1925. The tramcars are drawn along the track by nearly two miles of steel cable and carried 2.1 million passengers during the year. The tramway climbs up to an altitude of 1,305 feet above sea level and the steepest part of the track has a gradient of one in