XN000022-1973-08-08 — Page 5

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200,000 VEHICLES ON ROADS

Wednesday, August 8, 1973

A station wagon today became the 200,000th vehicle to be registered

in Hong Kong.

Vehicle Registration Office at Rumsey Street.

The licence was issued at 2.30 p.m. at the Transport Department's

There are now just over 300 vehicles for every mile of road giving

Hong Kong one of the highest traffic densities in the world.

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Commenting on this record, the Commissioner for Transport, Mr. B.D. Wilson,

said: "We are heading for a crisis on our roads much quicker than many people

realise and measures to restrain the use of private transport and to improve

public transport facilities must be introduced as a matter of urgency."

He said that since the present registration system was introduced

immediately after the Second World War, 21 years had gone by before the number

of vehicles reached the first 100,000 mark.

"But from 1967, it has taken only six years to reach the second

100,000," he said.

Over the past few years, vehicle registrations have been increasing

at a rate of about 14 per cent compound per year, "and there is no sign so

far of any slackening in this rate of increase," the Commissioner said.

The first vehicle registered in Hong Kong was in July 1909 and a total

of five motor vehicles were registered in that year.

The registration fee at that time was $24 per annum,

It is believed that one of the first vehicles on the roads in Hong

Kong belonged to a Dr. Noble in 1904.

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