Q Is there room for compromise in the reclamation battle?
I suggest rephrasing the question to: why is there no serious opposition to the plan to build a Wan Chai-Central bypass?
Providing more capacity for cars simply increases car proliferation in a never-ending spiral. Numerous cities are demolishing roads built in the 1960s and 1970s when there was still a naive illusion that car growth could be accommodated.
Planners have known for a generation that there are more subtle solutions to traffic congestion, but powerful lobbies with vested interests in promoting more cars, roads, and concrete have frightened governments from implementing sophisticated traffic demand management systems, which incorporate techniques such as road pricing or congestion charging.
Today, the situation is changing with the success of London's recently-introduced congestion charge. It took a politician with the guts of Mayor Ken Livingstone to implement this. Now cities throughout the world, inspired by London's example, are planning to introduce similar schemes.
Not Hong Kong, of course. Predictably, the car-bound bureaucrats of the Environment, Transport and Works Bureau, our legislators, and the business interests they serve continue to pay no more than lip service to transport sustainability.