Requirements for substantial expenditure on rail links with Junk Bay and Ma On Shan, additional cross harbour and border road links and such major developments as container port expansion and Tin Shui Wai could also arise. In addition, the decision should take into consideration the facts that major urban development on North Lantau would have to start from scratch and that land develop- ment on North Lantau would be difficult and expensive;
as there is scope for selecting development areas to meet population pressures during this decade, the possible choices should be evaluated in a rational way, accepting a new airport as a major growth point. One reasonable choice is the NWNT with an airport in Deep Bay;
the planned and potential developments and continued growth trends in the rural areas of the NWNT could raise the present population of 0.3 million persons to between 1 and 1.3 million by 1996, and this (plus the need to cater for increasing road traffic between Hong Kong and China) would necessitate heavy capital investment of about $2 billion in new transport infrastructure. But this infrastructure would suffice to cope with traffic generated by an airport in Deep Bay;
a population of 1 million persons should produce a labour force of 550,000 persons which in turn should be able to furnish a substantial number of the 45,000 workers which an airport would require;
land needed for the establishment of the broad range of maintenance and service industries associated with an airport and also for schools, hospitals, shopping centres and the like could be made available in the NWNT;
vigorous development within the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (SSEZ) could generate a considerable amount of business passenger traffic and airfreight which could be well served by a high capacity airport at Deep Bay;
(g)
over-exposure to aircraft noise would probably affect a maximum of about 30,000
persons. Sound insulation and other
ameliorative measures for them might prove to be a cheap solution compared with any potential
differential higher costs involved in building an airport at CLK;
SECRET
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