Bridging the gap

In the late 1970s, Britain's Conservative Party won a general election with an advertisement that showed a welfare queue beside the slogan 'Labour isn't working'. It was a strikingly simple image that made its own argument. Anyone wanting to make the case for better transport links with the Pearl River Delta need only repeat the trick with a picture of the long lines of trucks that daily clog the Lok Ma Chau border crossing.

Granted, the controversy over whether Hong Kong should build a bridge to the western part of the Pearl River Delta has turned largely on whether more container terminals should be built on Lantau. Equally, there is no direct evidence that a bridge to Zhuhai-Macau would ease congestion at Lok Ma Chau, where trucks mostly from the eastern delta commonly wait eight hours to clear Customs. Improving the flow of goods depends as much on the 'soft' infrastructure of Customs clearance procedures as on better roads and bridges.

Yet no one who looks at a map of the actual and planned transport arteries across the delta can doubt the ultimate logic behind the proposed bridge. It will close the loop, tying the western SAR and the airport into the highways and superhighways of the fast-developing western delta, creating an integrated network with Hong Kong as the southern axis.

Hopewell Holdings chairman Sir Gordon Wu Ying-sheung, the principal advocate of the bridge, has removed the main objection to the project by saying he does not intend to seek government subsidies. At the same time, the government has indicated it may be warming to the scheme.

Financial Secretary Antony Leung Kam-chung, in saying that the bridge was necessary in the long term, was only repeating the government's existing position. Yet his decision to step into Mr Wu's dispute with Canning Fok Kin-ning, group managing director of port operator Hutchison Whampoa, was telling. Mr Leung is the most senior government official to give the scheme his overt backing.

Until now, the government has postponed discussion of the issue, saying the bridge would not be needed until 2020. It may not have the luxury of such an extended gestation period. With Guangdong raising the idea of a Zhuhai-Shenzhen tunnel that could cut Hong Kong out of the transport loop, this is no time for dithering.