Lack of foresight over new year travel chaos bodes ill for Hong Kong

I bet Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu secretly breathed a sigh of relief that his duty visit to Beijing was before the new year. What would President Xi Jinping say to Lee if he saw, like the rest of us, the distressing images of thousands of mainland visitors stranded at a railway station or delayed at the border for hours, unable to return home after attending the city’s New Year’s Eve celebrations?

Hong Kong prides itself on its interconnectivity – within the city as well as with the mainland – and its world-class transport network, but it failed to connect or move people from point A to B. If the Kai Tak fiasco involving stranded tourists was an epic failure, what was the New Year’s Eve train wreck of poor planning, poor management and poor coordination?

No one foresaw that the New Year’s Eve fireworks, the biggest ever, would usher in such a debacle. Visitors certainly got first-hand experience of the city’s “optimism and diligence” – qualities mentioned in the run-up to the celebrations. The government had appeared optimistic, going all-out to attract people, but diligence in managing the crowds was missing.

The biggest problem could be that the government wasn’t really that optimistic. Officials said the fireworks would bring in many visitors, but maybe they didn’t actually believe that. How else could they have been caught by surprise by stranded travellers?

One example is official confidence in attracting talent and their families yet continuing to shut schools and slash classes, only to reverse course after the increase in enrolments from, well, the influx of families who heeded the call. This bad habit is detrimental to the government’s credibility. When our leaders don’t mean what they say, they inspire little confidence.