ENG-1971 — Page 242

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COMMUNICATIONS

The number of vehicles and passengers carried by the company across the harbour during the year totalled 6,800,000 and 190,500,000 respectively. The company also operates two dual-purpose triple- deck ferries with air-conditioned top decks. Besides serving as a cross-harbour ferry, the Man Ping is used on harbour cruises in the evenings operating as a floating nightclub with restaurant facilities, and on excursion trips to outlying islands at weekends. Her sister ship the Man Shing is available for hire by private parties for evening cruises.

The Star Ferry Company Limited runs a passenger ferry service across the harbour between Central district and Tsim Sha Tsui on the southern tip of Kowloon peninsula. The company uses 10 vessels on this service with a total passenger-carrying capacity of 5,643. Supplementary services are operated to cope with the daily peak hour traffic and to relieve congestion at the ferry concourses. During 1971 55.6 million passengers were carried.

ADMINISTRATION

The Transport Advisory Committee, formed in 1965, has a membership of four official members and six unofficial members, with one of the latter as its chairman. It advises the Governor or the statutory authority (who in most cases is the Commissioner for Transport) on all aspects of transport and traffic policy, with the exception of external sea and air communications.

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The Transport Department provides a secretariat for the Transport Advisory Committee and carries out a wide range of executive func- tions including vehicle licensing, driving tests and vehicle inspection. As the statutory authority, the Commissioner for Transport is also responsible for regulating public transport services and co-ordinating action between other departments in the transport field.

The number of registered motor vehicles at the end of 1971 was 164,378, an increase of 14 per cent over the previous year. The demand for driving licences continued to rise and during the year 225,677 driving tests were conducted and 45,954 driving licences were issued. (Vehicle statistics are given in Appendix 42 and driv- ing licence statistics in Appendix 39).

A Kowloon Branch of the Licensing Office was opened at Pui Ching Road on August 31. At present it only offers limited services but should be fully operational early in 1972.

A system of compulsory annual inspection of taxis, public cars, public light buses first registered before January 1, 1969, and