Editorial | Lessons to be learned from monorail plan
- The decision not to go ahead with an elevated monorail in the Kowloon East business hub has raised serious questions over Hong Kong’s civil engineering credentials.
The government must explore alternatives and avoid similar mishaps in planning and development.
The public could be excused for feeling exasperated when officials spent so much time and money only to conclude that the project is technically impossible.
Hailed as a showpiece of the Energising Kowloon East redevelopment project, the proposed HK$12 billion eco-friendly sky train was deemed a necessary infrastructure for the city’s booming business hub.
The idea of a rail system linking the former airport and Kowloon East was first floated in 2007, with rounds of studies and public consultations costing no less than HK$92 million. But the development chief officially declared it as “not sustainable and pursuable”, citing high cost and the “severe constraints” by the adjacent congested developments as the reasons.
It has to ask why the government has taken so long to come to such a conclusion. The high cost and environmental constraints do not appear overnight. When asked about the progress in June, the government acknowledged that there were “more-than-expected and complicated challenges”, but stopped short of abandoning the monorail proposal.