Private Building Development
3.07
The principal function of the Buildings Ordinance Office is to consider all plans for private development submitted for approval. Staff requirements to deal with these plans are governed essentially by development trends and forward planning for the General Divisions of the Buildings Ordinance Office is therefore limited to anticipation based on these trends.
3.08
There are, however, other functions of the Buildings Ordinance Office that should be planned for, but which are not directly related to the rate of current private development. For example, there is a need for a concerted campaign against the massive amount of illegal building works and unauthorized use of buildings. Additionally, it would be desirable to increase the work on planned surveys in those areas of Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories which still contain a considerable number of dilapidated buildings, to seek out those which are dangerous or potentially dangerous. Planned surveys are also required to locate buildings with defective private drains, which in some districts now present a fairly serious health hazard. For the last decade, the professional staff establishment of this Office has been substantially under strength, this year being no exception, and therefore activities in these secondary but important functions of the office have been limited, albeit consistent with a reasonable measure of safety.
Highways
ENGINEERING
3.09
Roads and drainage works are constructed to an overall plan which is developed in three stages :-
3.10
(a) the assessment of the present demand and growth rate;
(c) forward projections to a designed year or to the ultimate; and
the formulation of proposals.
There are 1,080 km of roads in Hong Kong. The total number of vehicles registered at the end of the year was 187,954, a decrease of 1.7% during the previous twelve months.
3.11
Out of 15 cordons and screen lines, 14 showed an increase in average daily traffic over the previous year. The highest traffic flow again occurred on Prince Edward Road near Choi Hung Road, but here the average daily traffic for 1975 was 109,510 vehicles per day, a decrease of 4% from the figure for 1974.
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