reporting slight damage to the Police. Motorists involved in minor collisions need only exchange particulars if this is mutually agreed.
TRAFFIC OFFENCES
178. There were 99,587 prosecutions. Appendix 30 gives further details and shows the trend over the last 5 years.
TRAFFIC PROBLEMS
179. The combined effects of continuing development, increasing population and numbers of vehicles have resulted in a further deterioration in traffic conditions.
180. There is now little more that can be done by way of additional controls and intersections, re-routing, new one-way schemes and appeals to all road-users to avoid peak periods, to improve traffic flow. Only large-scale road engineering projects, including road-widening, fly-overs, grade-separations and intersections and bridges or tunnels for pedestrians will provide effective improvement. Work on a number of these, including the new Albany Road under-pass scheme, and a new dual-carriageway road through Ho Man Tin was in progress during the year. Existing plans for major traffic-engineering projects will be affected by a com- prehensive survey of the Colony's Public Transport needs. Further details of this survey are given at paragraph 193 below.
181. 1,297 new parking meters were installed in the Central and Causeway Bay districts on the Island, and in Nathan Road in Kowloon bringing the total number of metered parking spaces in use at the end of the year to 3,313. Annual revenue from these meters amounted to $1,212,443.
182. No new multi-storey car parks were provided during the year. The total capacity of the existing parks is 1,375 vehicles. Revenue received during the year from them and other open parks was $1,557,511. A new eight-storeyed car park was under construction near the junction of Nathan Road and Chatham Road. This will provide space for 910 vehicles.
183. Some 2,000 additional non-metered parking spaces were marked out in various urban residential areas to improve kerb-side parking and prevent obstruction of pavements and entrances.
PUBLIC ROAD TRANSPORT
184. During 1963 a total of 1,027 million passengers were carried by the principal public transport companies, and about three-quarters
31
Page 45Page 46