August_1970 — Page 3

news review

Steady increase in new building plans

The Building Ordinance Office of the Hong Kong PWD has taken steps to enable authorised architects to carry out foundation works of new buildings as early as possible.

At a recent meeting with representatives of authorised architects, a proposal for a change in foundation-work procedure was discussed. It would materially assist in ensuring an early start on construction by allowing foundation works to proceed after building and foundation plans had been submitted. The foundation plans would be considered, and approved, and consent for this work given.

The representatives, two members each from the Hong Kong Society of Architects and the En- gineering Society of Hong Kong, were also inform- ed of the measures taken by the Building Authori- ty to speed up the approval of building plans. The most important was the concentration of the bulk of staff available in the Buildings Ordinance Office upon examination and approval of plans and ap- plications to begin work.

A PWD spokesman said last month that applica- tions in connection with new buildings had steadily increased in the last few years. Plans for new build- ings in 1968 totalled 364. In 1969, they reached 786, and in the first six months of this year, 499.

The spokesman said these figures referred only to first applications to erect new buildings. When these plans had been approved, they were followed by a series of detailed plans concerning the com- ponent parts of the building to be examined in each case, and application for consent to begin work on the respective stages.

In June this year, 95 plans for new buildings were submitted, and more than 1,000 applications altogether were received for consent to begin work, approval of plans, structural details and foundation works. When these were being examined, it was necessary to take into account three major schemes for which the PWD had been preparing, or had been associated with over the past few years. They were the proposed underground railway, the long term road proposals based on the Long Term Road Study, and the Urban Renewal District, the spokes- man said.

It was clearly in the public interest that this additional procedural burden should be shouldered

frustrated by private development. In fact, the spokesman said, it had proved possible to accom- modate almost all major private development pro- posals by adjustment of the planning of the schemes themselves, but the detailed consideration of individual cases necessarily took time.

Flyovers opened

The Fleming Road flyover in Wan Chai, Hong Kong, was opened to traffic last month. It is the second of six flyovers to be completed as part of the vast Waterfront Road scheme, designed to cope with the rapidly increasing volume of traffic be- tween the Central District and North Point, Hong Kong.

The first of the six, Arsenal Street, was com- pleted in June. The four remaining flyovers are at Canal Road, Marsh Road, Causeway Bay and Tsing Fung Street.

Fleming Street flyover provides a more direct route for traffic between Wai Chai ferry concourse and areas south of Lockhart Road. It is about 700 ft. long and has a 24 ft. carriageway providing lanes for traffic in both directions. It starts just after the junction with Lockhart Road, crosses Jaffe Road and stretches over Gloucester Road to the new Wan Chai reclamation where it branches off into two 16ft. ramps.

In Kowloon, the first of three flyovers at the

so that these schemes for the public good were not Fleming Road flyover, Hong Kong

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Far East BUILDER, August 1970