TNAG-2791-FCO40-4030-Relations-between-Hong-Kong-and-China.-With-maps-1993 — Page 93

- 2 ·

---

Firstly,

the proposed bridge can help relieve the pressure on road transport network of the border areas. At present, all the cross-border traffic between Guangdong and Hong Kong must pass through Man Kam To, Huanggang and Sha Tau Kok on the Shenzhan border. According to our statistics, the total daily traffic figures at these 3 crossing points were about 10,000 in 1989, 16,000 in 1991 and 20,000 at the present moment. The fact that traffic volume has doubled within 3 years reflects the rapid growth in cross-broder road transport. Of all these cross-border vehicles, more than 90% are goods vehicles and a substantial proportion of such goods vehicles are heavy-duty lorries and container trucks. Such an enormous traffic flow has not only exerted a heavy pressure on the border check-points but also engendered a traffic saturation on the trunk roads that run from Man Kam To in the north to Kowloon proper in the south. Quite recently, the serious traffic congestion on these trunk roads arising from the enormous volume of cross-border traffic has adversely affected the economic development of both Guangdong and Hong Kong. Such serious vehicular traffic congestion and the rapid growth of traffic volume have inevitably led to an active search for the possibility of constructing an alternative road link between Guangdong and Hong Kong. The proposed cross-estuary bridge would open up a new passageway that connects Guangdong and Hong ' Kong in an east-to-west direction. From Tuen Mun, this passageway terminates at the interchange with the Circular Road which runs on to reach Huanggang, Shenzhen in the northwest and to Kowloon proper in the southeast. Goods from western Guangdong can be transported to Hong Kong through this bridge, thus resulting in a relief of pressures on the critical traffic condition of the north-to-south highways in Kowloon Peninsula (sic) as well as on the workload of the Shenzhen crossing-points.

a new era that

The completion of the bridge project will mark signals a prosperous transport business between

Guangdong and Hong Kong.

Secondly, the proposed bridge can help relieve the traffic pressure on the Humen Highway. At present, there are only two highways plying between the two banks of Pearl River : one is the circular highway that encircles Guangzhou city, the other is the Humen Highway that plys between Dongguan and Panyu.