Tuen Mun Road bus-only lane to stay
The Tuen Mun Road bus-only lane scheme will be made a long term measure from next Monday (July 24) in its present form with Sham Tseng Interchange opened to light vehicles.
The decision was made at a meeting of the Government/District Board Working Group on Traffic Improvement for the Yuen Long/Tuen Mun - Tsuen Wan/Kwai Tsing Corridor held today (Monday).
At present, the inside lane of the Tsuen Wan bound carriageway of Tuen Mun Road from So Kwun Wat to the Sham Tseng Interchange is designated a bus-only lane between 7 am and 9 am daily except Sundays and public holidays.
Light vehicles of three tonnes and below are allowed to enter Tuen Mun Road both bounds from Castle Peak Road through Sham Tseng Interchange. The speed limit of the Tsuen Wan bound carriageway of Tuen Mun Road at Sham Tseng Interchange for 1.3 kilometres has been lowered to 50 kilometres per hour and vehicles cannot change lanes between the inside and middle lanes in this particular section of the road.
The scheme in its present form was put to trial on June 12. During the past few weeks, a lot of data have been collected and analysed.
Chairman of the Working Group and Assistant Commissioner for Transport, Mr Alan Lui, said the result of analysis of the data showed that bus journey times were a bit longer than before.
"The saving in bus travel time brought about by the original bus-only lane was up to five minutes. It was observed that after the opening of Sham Tseng Interchange the net saving in bus travel time was only up to 3.5 minutes." Mr Lui said.
The Kowloon Motor Bus also reported that with the opening of Sham Tseng Interchange, the average passenger figure of their services via Tuen Mun Road dropped by about 1,000. It was also noted that the total number of franchised bus trips operated via Tuen Mun Road also slightly decreased in the morning peak hours.
"However, an important point to note is that although bus service has been affected slightly by the opening up of Sham Tseng Interchange, it has still become much more reliable than before the introduction of the bus-only lane when there were about 30 loss trips everyday. Bus journey times now are also more steady," Mr Lui said.
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