XN000022-1973-10-12 — Page 4

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Friday, October 12, 1973

ENCOURAGING RESPONSE TO TRANSPORT SURVEY

Public response to household interviews being conducted by the

government to get detailed information about transport patterns indicates

that Hong Kong citizens are displaying a higher degree of social con-

sciousness and a greater sense of civic responsibility than communities

in other parts of the world covered by similar surveys in the past.

The response so far has been very encouraging, and the information

which the interviews have yielded will be of great value," a spokesman

for Public Works Department's Highways Office said today.

The series of household interviews, conducted by interviewers

who call at residents' homes, started on September 17 and is now about

20 per cent complete, with about two more months of the programme to run.

About 5,000 households have been visited to date.

A spokesman for Wilbur Smith and Associates, the consulting firm

which has been carrying out the interviews on the government's behalf as

part of the Comprehensive Transport Study, commented: "The rate of

refusals-to-answer up to now stands at only 3.2 per cent. This is

significantly better than the rates which we encountered at comparable stages

of similar surveys in other areas for example, in the United States,

Britain and Australia."

He added that the consultants had high hopes that public participation

would continue at this level during the remainder of the surveys.

"In particular, we hope for a similar co-operative response

in our roadside interviews, which will start next week. Information from

these interviews can play a vital part in rounding out our picture of transport

patterns."

/Motorists