XN000022-1972-03-15 — Page 7

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Wednesday, March 15, 1972

"Yet today we still find Government avoiding coming to grips with the

problem as a whole and working out a satisfactory overall policy.

The various aspects of the problem, such as roads, town-planning,

public transport, private transport, parking and the mass transit scheme continue

to be dealt with piecemeal and with no sense of urgency."

The Financial Secretary had told Legislative Council in his Budget

Speech that even the first stage of the mass transit project would require

at least six years to build.

Raises Question

Sir Yuet-keung said: "This surely raises in the minds of the public

this question: how is it that, on a project which will require so much time

to carry out, Government has dragged its feet for so many years while all

the time the estimated cost of construction has been rapidly mounting?"

Another sector in which the absence of sound policy was keenly felt,

Sir Yuet-keung said, was that of road transport and parking.

"My colleagues, I expect, will deal with this, as with other subjects,

in much more detail that I propose to, but I would like to make these points."

He said it was a serious reflection on Government thinking on this

topic that, apart from a road development programme which suffered from a lack

of integrated planning and was many years behind Hong Kong's needs, "virtually

the sum total of immediate Government action seems to be to impose what the

Financial Secretary calls 'a policy of restraints on the private motorists.'

"While these restraints may lead to a marginal improvement in the

situation, our transport problems can no more be solved by squeezing the private

motorist than a water shortage could be solved by increasing consumer charges for

water."

/Secondly,