ENG-1979 — Page 226

COMMUNICATIONS AND TRANSPORT

Parking

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Parking charges for all government car parks were increased in November to improve overall use and to ensure that a reasonable number of spaces became available throughout the day.

A comprehensive review of parking policy was being carried out by a working group in 1979 in which every aspect of parking was being examined including policy regarding the provision and management of car parks, the problem of lorry parking, parking in the new towns of the New Territories and at Mass Transit Railway stations, and parking charges.

Parking facilities are provided by the government in eight multi-storey car parks, with 4,728 parking spaces, and four temporary open-air car parks with 1,044 parking spaces. Two of the four open-air car parks cater specially for commercial vehicles.

Parking facilities are also provided by private enterprise in about 40 multi-storey and open-air car parks with some 12,000 spaces, mostly in the commercial-residential areas of North Point, Tsim Sha Tsui, Mong Kok, San Po Kong and Causeway Bay.

Where no traffic disruption is caused, on-street parking spaces are provided. In areas with limited spaces, but where the demand is high, the spaces are metered. There are 11,319 metered spaces of which 980 are specially for goods vehicles. Payment is required from 8 am to midnight. In areas like Wan Chai, Happy Valley, North Point and Tsim Sha Tsui among others, parking is controlled by traffic wardens who, together with the police, operate a fixed penalty system for parking offences.

In November, the Legislative Council approved proposals to raise the fixed penalties for parking and moving traffic offences. Penalties for illegal parking will be increased from $30 to $70 in 1980.

Shipping

Hong Kong is the world's seventh largest port in terms of tonnages of shipping using its facilities, cargo handled and the number of passengers carried. Victoria Harbour, which lies between Hong Kong Island and the city of Kowloon, is one of the three most perfect natural harbours in the world. It has an area of 6,000 hectares varying in width from 1.6 to 9.6 kilometres.

The administration of the port is one of the responsibilities of the Director of Marine. To ensure that port facilities and services continue to develop with the changing needs of Hong Kong and of the ships which use the port, the director is advised on its adminis- tration by the Port Committee and the Port Executive Committee, through which the closest liaison with Hong Kong's shipping and commercial interests is maintained.

The Kwai Chung Container Terminal, which ranks among the top four container ter- minals in the world, handled the equivalent of 1.3 million twenty-foot containers in 1979. The terminal has six berths totalling more than 2,300 metres fronting on to about 85 hectares of cargo handling space, which includes container yards and container freight stations. Six 'third generation' container ships can be accommodated and worked simul- taneously at these berths, all of which are operated by private companies or consortia. In 1979, some 9,800 ocean-going vessels called at Hong Kong and loaded and discharged nearly 28 million tonnes of cargo. This included 21.3 million tonnes of general goods, 54 per cent of which was containerised cargo.

Despite the impact of containerisation, a considerable amount of dry cargo handled in Hong Kong is still transported at some stage by about 1,900 lighters and junks. The