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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL

He said: Mr. Chairman, I rise to move the motion that stands in my name concerning the Council's car park on the central reclamation which I think is now known as the Star Ferry Concourse Car Park.

This is the first storied public car park to be erected in Hong Kong and has been handed over to the Urban Council to run despite not inconsiderable pressure to the effect that it should be leased out as a commercial concern to some local company with experience in garaging facilities. It is therefore of great im- portance to demonstrate that the car park by being run as a local Council concern is not only efficient but is also at rates lower than those which would be charged by private enterprise. At present criticisms which may or may not be justified are being made about the charges and the service generally which we pro- vide and this may to some extent account for the fact that the car park is at present seldom full. On the other hand directly the second car park on the central reclamation is completed and opened to the public, which will presumably also be under the charge of this Council, one must expect that the whole of the remainder of the central reclamation must be closed against car parking facilities and indeed, we hope it will not be long now before the foundation stone is laid for the Town Hall and Civic Centre. This means that the majority of people working in the business centre of Victoria will be forced, whether they like it or not, to park their cars in these two big car parks and indeed, if there is any truth in the rumours going around town to the effect that we may shortly be seeing parking meters in the streets, the era of free parking will soon be gone forever.

Let us then consider the type of person who is likely to patronize our car parks. The existing difficulty over parking facilities has already forced many of those persons who can afford it, to engage the services of chauffeurs and such people are only likely to use the park, if at all, as somewhere where the chauffeur can drive the car for a period of short duration whilst waiting to pick up his employer outside the office. The next group of persons one might describe generally as the wives who come down with their own or their husband's car for a morning or afternoon's shopping and do not require the use of the car park for more than a maximum of say two hours a day. Perhaps most of these first two groups will not raise very much objection to the charge of 50 that they would have to pay for the use of the

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car park. But, there is a third group and perhaps the biggest group of all, and that is the office workers who drive themselves to work mainly because of the inadequacy of public transport facilities available in our rather narrow streets and who therefore need to find parking accommodation from about 9.00 a.m. until 1.00 p.m. and again from 2.00 p.m. when they return from lunch to 5.00 p.m. or later. Some at least of these people may be in receipt of a salary which is sufficient for them not to be seriously affected by a parking charge that at present rates would work out at $2.00 per day, although many of them nevertheless are un- doubtedly saying that it is too much. On the other hand a fairly high proportion of those people are in the salary group of say $750.00 to $1,500.00 a month and to whom an additional parking charge of about $60.00 per month on top of what is probably a high rental and high cost of living is a very serious in-road into the monthly budget. Licensing fees for cars are by no means cheap in Hong Kong and the present car park fees on top may well make the difference for many of these people as to whether or not they can afford their own family car. There is a very strong complaint being voiced by members of the public that the parking rates are too high and I feel that if we possibly can we should try to meet this complaint by an appropriate reduction. The matter is obviously one which needs to be reconsidered by the relevant Select Committee, which is therefore the basis of my motion.

These

There are other, shall I say, suggestions, that I have heard from members of the public in connexion with parking rates, perhaps of less importance than the problem of the daily rates but which might well be considered at the same time. really amount to the suggestion that we might consider special rates for week-ends and public holidays. A particular point is the cost of parking over the week-end, to people going off to the New Territories who do not wish to take their car across the harbour. The present charge of $5.00 for the first 24 hours

is doubled in respect to each succeeding 24 hours so that the period from Saturday over to Monday morning will cost about $15.00-if indulged in, 4 weekends a month yet another $60.00 per month. We obviously wish to discourage people using the car park as an overnight Car Park during the week, but the same reasoning does not apply at week-ends and I think that we might be able to try to meet week-end car parkers in that matter.

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