Jake's View | Ferry subsidies to push rents up further
Operators should be allowed to raise fares, instead of receiving handouts; civil servants' involvement in business benefits capitalists
The government plans to spend almost HK$610 million adding space for shops to three Central ferry piers as a form of cross-subsidy to help boat operators stay afloat in the long term.
I am a former resident of Cheung Chau. We moved there in the early 1980s as a low-rent refuge from a bear market so severe that even some stockbrokers, as I was then, had trouble affording Mid-Levels rents.
I loved the place, still do, but the kids reached school age, the bear market turned into one of the most magnificent bull markets of Hong Kong's history, and we moved back to town. Along the way I reckon the time I spent on the Cheung Chau ferry could be measured in months.
It was a comfortable ride on the big slow ferries of that time. In the morning I picked up breakfast at any of a number of stalls on the waterfront and then enjoyed a quiet hour riding into Central, during which I could get more real work out of the way than in any hour in the office. The evening return trip was an opportunity to unwind from the strains of the day.
I am in favour of continuing to make it a worthwhile and affordable experience for people to reside on Cheung Chau but I doubt that adding three floors to the top of the existing outlying islands ferry piers will do this for them.