102. The audit review examined the origins of these policy contradictions and it was found that the failure to check the growth in the number of taxis had the most damaging effect on the efforts to reduce traffic congestion. In J 1981 the Secretary for the Environment attempted to implement the White Paper's policy by proposing that the limit of 10 000 urban taxis set in January 1980 should not be raised at that time but low fares had caused a shortage of taxis and the proposal was rejected by the Governor in Council and the limit raised to 12 000. A proposal in December 1982 to freeze this limit was also rejected by the Governor in Council and the maximum number was raised to 15 000. It was at this stage, when the growth in the number of taxis was being encouraged by the Government, that the decision to proceed with the electronic road pricing pilot stage was made. However, it soon became obvious to the Transport Branch that the implementation of the Government's policy on taxis had got out of hand and it was decided to carry out a full-scale review. The report of the 1983 Taxi Review described the problem as follows:
"In practice, the issue of taxi licences has tended to be demand responsive to secure ready taxi availability, while levels of taxi fares have never been set to discourage taxi patronage. Policy decisions as regards taxis have also tended to be made in isolation from other transport policy issues such as restraints on private vehicles to reduce congestion and priority to be given to mass transit carriers. The result is that it is difficult to reconcile the increased number of taxis on the road and the kilometrage they travel, with the lower priority of taxis in the transport hierarchy".
The review pointed to the extent to which taxis had been increasing. In 1978, the year before the White Paper was published, the number of passengers carried by taxis represented 11.5% of the number of passengers carried by all forms of public transport, but by June 1983 this proportion had increased to 16.6%. Taxis were therefore eating into the patronage of public transport mass carriers when the policy was exactly the opposite and the effectiveness of the Government's measures against congestion had been "seriously undermined by continuing to put more taxis on the road". In response to the Taxi Review the Government in January 1984 accepted that there should be a freeze on the number of taxis but by this time the total number of taxis in Hong Kong had nearly doubled from 8 700 in 1979, when the White Paper was published, to 15 800 in 1984. However, a 24% fare increase recommended by the Transport Advisory Committee was rejected in favour of only an 11% increase. With such a large supply of taxis, which in 1984 carried nearly as many passengers as the whole of the Mass Transit Railway system and about twice as many passengers as private cars, the prospect of using taxi control measures to reduce traffic congestion as set out in the White Paper was severely weakened. The level of taxi fares is now lower in real terms than it was in 1979 when the White Paper stressed the importance of increasing them.
103. The implementation of the Government's policy on parking suffered from the same uncertainties as the taxi policy with decisions sometimes being made in isolation from other aspects of transport policy. The White Paper recognized that the supply of parking spaces and the charges for them were crucial in controlling road use by private cars and the Working Group on Parking Policy accepted the principle that discouraging all-day, off-street car parking by increasing parking charges was consistent with the Government's overall transport policy of relating the provision of parking spaces to the capacity of adjacent roads. The Working Group's report was issued in March 1981 and one of its most important recommendations was that:
"Parking facilities in a particular area must be provided at a price which ensures that the demand for parking in that area is in balance with the supply, which must itself be determined by the ability of the surrounding roads to handle the traffic generated”.
In October 1981 the Executive Council was asked to consider the adoption of the Working Group's report as Government policy but in deciding to defer a decision pending a re-examination of certain details, including parking standards, the Governor in Council ruled that the existing policy of restraining car use by a general restriction of provision of parking space should be abandoned. At first this ruling was thought to conflict with the policy set out in the White Paper but on closer examination the Secretary for Transport concluded that there was no conflict and that the Government policy remained as laid down in the White Paper. Nevertheless, the misunderstanding persisted and was reflected in the Secretary for Transport's speech to the Legislative Council seven months later, in May 1982. The matter was never properly clarified because, although the revised parking standards were approved, the Working Group's report was never resubmitted to the Executive Council for adoption as Government policy.
104. The removal of parking and taxi control measures from the White Paper's package of proposals for reducing traffic congestion meant that the Government had to rely to a greater extent than intended on increasing annual licence fees as a means of control. This made it more necessary to consider other long-term solutions to the traffic congestion problem and soon after the introduction of the 1982 vehicle restraint measures, the Transport Branch received brief notes prepared by consultants suggesting that Hong Kong might be the prime candidate for considering electronic road pricing. However, the consultants stressed the need for a feasibility study to consider the objectives of restraint policy and the various options available to implement the policy, including the practicability of each of the different methods. The Secretary for Transport responded quickly to the prospect of road pricing and in May 1982 he put in motion the process that led to the pilot stage of the electronic road pricing scheme. However, he was reluctant to spend time reconsidering all the options as suggested by the consultants, apparently believing that the only options open to Hong Kong were either high vehicle taxation or electronic road pricing. Taxi and parking controls were excluded from consideration because these were stated to have been rejected by the Governor in Council.
105. The package of restraint measures set out in the White Paper on Internal Transport Policy for controlling traffic congestion were designed to achieve similar objectives to those now proposed for the Electronic Road Pricing Scheme
20
:
:
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.