Legco panel rips transport chief over slow speeds on Hong Kong’s streets

As the average vehicle speed on Hong Kong’s roads slowed to 23km/h in 2013 and parking facilities remained in short supply, legislators on Tuesday criticised the government for doing little in recent years to solve the problems.

But Secretary for Transport and Housing Professor Anthony Cheung Bing-Leung, speaking in a meeting of the Legislative Council’s transport panel, insisted the government was taking a multi-prong approach to ease the situation. He also said authorities had no plan to set a cap on the number of private cars.

Cheung told legislators that because of social and environmental constrains on constructing new roads, the average growth rate of the total length of public roads was only 0.8 per cent between 2003 and 2013.

However, the number of private cars on those roads grew by 40 per cent in the same period.

Labour Party legislator Lee Cheuk-yan said he believed the government intended to rely only on increasing license or registration fees to solve the problem, as it had been dragging its feet on other measures such as introducing a congestion charge.

DAB’s Ben Chan Han-bun said as more people moved into towns in the New Territories in recent years, the government had failed to improve the road conditions. He said rail and buses were packed in morning rush hours.