ENG-2013 — Page 273

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Transport

will significantly shorten the travelling 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 Man Kam To and Sha Tau Kok boundary crossings in the eastern part of the New Territories.

Cross Boundary Ferries

Cross-boundary ferry services to Macao and some 11 Mainland ports are provided by six operators at the Hong Kong-Macao Ferry Terminal in Sheung Wan and the China Ferry Terminal in Tsim Sha Tsui.

In 2013, 20.99 million travellers used cross-boundary ferry services to travel to and from Macao, while the number travelling to and from Mainland ports was 4.97 million.

The Port

In 2013, Hong Kong handled a total of 22.35 million Twenty-foot Equivalent Units of containers (TEUs), and was the fourth busiest port in the world. Some 376,100 vessels arrived in and departed from Hong Kong during the year, carrying 270 million tonnes of cargo and about 28.8 million passengers. Most of these passengers commuted on a highly efficient fleet of high- speed ferries, including jetfoils and catamarans, to and from Macao and ports on the Mainland.

Hong Kong is a modern, well equipped deep-water port serving two main types of maritime transport: ocean-going vessels from all parts of the world and coastal and river-trade vessels from the Pearl River. A daily average of around 82 ocean-going vessels and nearly 432 river-trade vessels arrive at the port; and many high-speed ferries and local vessels work in, or pass through, the harbour. Hong Kong's ship turnaround performance is among the best in the world: the average turnaround time for container vessels at the container terminals is estimated to be about 10 hours.

Port Development

Container handling facilities are a key part of the logistics sector's infrastructure. The nine container terminals at the Kwai Chung-Tsing Yi area, which handle 77 per cent of Hong Kong's container throughput, have 24 berths with a total handling capacity of about 21 million TEUS

per year.

To strengthen Hong Kong's position as an Asia-Pacific regional hub port, in August the government commenced dredging works for the Kwai Tsing Container Basin and related fairways to a depth of 17.5 metres. When completed in 2015, this will enable the new generation of ultra-large container ships to use the port at all tides.

Strategic Planning

The government has commissioned a 'Study on the Strategic Development Plan for Hong Kong Port 2030' to update port cargo forecasts, to find ways of using existing port facilities more. efficiently and to plan for the future development of the Hong Kong Port. The study is expected to be completed in 2014.

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