TNAG-0958-FCO40-1177-Construction-of-underground-railway-system-in-Hong-Kong-1980 — Page 28

I

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British Trade Commission in Hong Kong

9th Floor Gammon House 12 Harcourt Road Hong Kong

Mail Address PO Box No 528 Hong Kong

Telex HX 73031

Cable Address Uktrade Hong Kong Telephone 5-230176

Mer. Clift

F.C.O

Cory TRED

Sext

SA

15712

C B Benjamin Esq PEP Division

Department of Trade 1 Victoria Street LONDON SWI

NİCK 173/2

RECEIVED IN A

19 DEC 1980

Your reference

Our reference

·Date a

ECO 173/2(A)

11 December 1980

INDEX

PA

Action Takon

No MS,912 Awiq

see

it

MASS TRANSIT RAILWAY

M

THE ISLAND LINE

Would you please refer to my letters ECO 173/2 of July 30 and September 1 in which I reported Norman Thompson's views on the Hong Kong Government thinking about the extension of the Mass Transit Railway on the north shore of Hong Kong island. In the letter of September 1 I said that a decision was being deferred until December.

2.

At the end of last week it was announced that the Transport Advisory Committee chaired by T S Lo, a member of the Executive Council, had recommended that the Hong Kong Government should authorise the construction of the Island Line. This was clearly an important decision because Lo has traditionally been an opponent of the Mass Transit Railway and his conversion to Norman Thompson's way of thinking suggested that the way was open for an early decision by the Executive Council. Gordon Manzie, who is here on a familiarisation visit, and I therefore took the opportunity of a courtesy call on Eric Black, Managing Director of the Mass Transit Railway, to find out the likely outcome of Exco's deliberations. In the absence of Norman Thompson in the United Kingdom, Black was extraordinarily forthcoming. He said that a paper (the eighth draft!) was now being considered by the Executive Council and that a decision would be taken at their meeting on December 16. With the conversion of T S Lo, he was confident that the MTR would receive the go-ahead and that the concept of a light railway on a segregated surface track was dead.

3. Black told us that the new Island Line would run from Western Market through the existing Chater and Admiralty Stations for a distance of 12.2 kilometres as far as Chai Wan which is nearly at the extreme eastern end of Hong Kong island. The work would be split into eleven separate contacts (including that of a major depot at Chai Wan) of which eight would be major bored tunnelling contracts, each for a distance of 1 kilometres. Black estimated that the construction costs of the Island Line would amount to about £30 million per kilometre, ie. each civil engineering contract could be worth about £45 million. He suggested that while this project alone should be of great interest to British civil engineering contractors, there would in addition be ten major development schemes (to be jointly

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/developed