IT is ridiculous that the three bus companies have been kept waiting more than a year for guidelines to reduce the likelihood of passengers being buried when slopes collapse on or near bus stops. Stimulated by the spotlight of publicity, the Government leapt into action after a mudslide killed one person and injured five at a terminus in Tsuen Wan in June 1993. But as rains eased and the spotlight shifted, so the wheels of the bureaucracy began to grind more slowly. Now it has taken another death and 17 injuries in a landslide in Tsuen Wan, following a mudslip that killed five people in Kennedy Town last month, to focus attention on dangerous bus stops. The Geotechnical Engineering Office has been convincing in its explanations of slope collapses, but if some are acts of God, it does not seem fair to blame God for all the problems that have been caused by the recent heavy rains. A landslide on Castle Peak Road yesterday was close to a Kowloon Motor Bus stop and most people can probably think of bus stops that would prove vulnerable if freak slope collapses became less freakish and more commonplace, which seems to have been the case in recent weeks. Bus stops present a problem, as they attract crowds of people, and the bus companies themselves would have to take responsibility for the number of people who can be found waiting at some stops. But the solution should be simple, and need not take a year of correspondence and slope surveys. If a bus stop appears vulnerable, move it. Then the bureaucrats can discuss the appropriate forms to be filled, the consultations to be conducted and the surveys to be scheduled.
