ENG-2011 — Page 313

Transport 269

New Boundary Crossings under Construction or Planning

To meet the continuous growth in cross-boundary traffic, new roads and rail crossings were planned in co-ordination with the Mainland authorities. The HZMB will provide direct connection between Hong Kong and the western part of Pearl River Delta. In March 2010, the Ministry of Transport of the Central People's Government approved the preliminary design of the HZMB Main Bridge. The governments of Guangdong, HKSAR and Macao Special Administrative Region established a 'Joint Works Committee of the Three Governments' in May 2010 to oversee the implementation of the HZMB project. In August, the three governments appointed the senior officials of the HZMB Authority which then formally came into operation.

The HZMB Authority is responsible for co-ordinating the construction, operation, maintenance and management of the HZMB Main Bridge, and for implementing various policies of the 'Joint Works Committee of the Three Governments'. Local works within HKSAR waters commenced in end-2011 and will dovetail with those in the Mainland for the commissioning of the HZMB in 2016.

The XRL will reduce rail travel time between Guangzhou and Hong Kong. It will also link Hong Kong to Beijing and other major Mainland cities via the Beijing- Guangzhou Passenger Line and the Hangzhou-Fuzhou-Shenzhen Passenger Line. It also will connect Hong Kong to cities in the Pan-Pearl River Delta region via the Rapid Transit System now under development in the Mainland. Construction of the Hong Kong section of XRL commenced in January 2010 for completion in 2015.

As for the Northern Link and the WEL, both schemes are currently being reviewed under the consultancy study on the Review and Update of the Railway Development Strategy 2000.

The proposed Liantang/Heung Yuen Wai Boundary Control Point (BCP), by connecting with the Eastern Corridor in Shenzhen, will provide efficient access to the eastern part of Guangdong, Fujian and Jiangxi Provinces via Shenzhen-Huizhou and Shenzhen-Shantou expressways. After the new BCP is commissioned in 2018, it will shorten significantly the distance between Hong Kong and Shenzhen and the nearby provinces and greatly facilitate future regional co-operation and development. It will also help redistribute the cross-boundary traffic among the existing boundary crossings in the eastern part of the New Territories (Man Kam To and Sha Tau Kok crossings).

Cross Boundary Ferries

Cross-boundary ferry services to about 12 Mainland ports and Macao are provided by eight operators at the Hong Kong-Macao Ferry Terminal in Sheung Wan, the China Ferry Terminal in Tsim Sha Tsui and the Tuen Mun Ferry Terminal. The number of cross-boundary travellers using these services to travel to and from Mainland ports totalled 4.8 million, and the number to and from Macao was 20.6 million in 2011.