Cycling Along Hong Kong's Harbor
People are pushing for a bike path, but not everyone thinks allowing cyclists into the planned harborfront areas is a good thing. By Grace Tsoi
As early as 2004, some members of the public had started lobbying for a continuous bike path along the waterfront on Hong Kong Island. Then, the Hong Kong Cycling Alliance—a group with the aim of turning Hong Kong into a more bike-friendly city—became the major advocate for the project and started to actively garner support from different sectors of the community. Its ultimate goal? The construction of a 16-kilometer cycleway that links Kennedy Town and Chai Wan.
The areas lining Victoria Harbour are set to be renovated anyway, and so cyclists want to make sure that they are considered when progress on that front actually happens.
“At the moment, the plan is for the harborfront to be continuous and connected. That’s what everyone says [including the government],” says Martin Turner of the Hong Kong Cycling Alliance. He also emphasizes that there are many locations which are currently out of reach and therefore unusable—such as the space behind tunnel entrances, roads and fixed developments—but that a cycle path would enable users to gain access to any point along the stretch.
Some, however, hold different opinions about the construction of such a path along the northern shore of Hong Kong Island. What about the risk that opening it up to cyclists will compromise pedestrians’ use and safety?
“Many of us have fought for years to open up the urban harborfront for pedestrian use and to engender connectivity. This will, we hope, in the fullness of time, allow a range of activities, the most predominant being walking along promenades and enjoying facilities and opportunities that relate to these,” wrote Peter Cookson Smith, the president of the Hong Kong Institute of Planners and a member of the Harborfront Commission, in a written reply to the Cycling Alliance’s submission nine months ago. He reasoned that the new promenades will have to be quite narrow because of limitations on land reclamation and construction in Victoria Harbour. A cycleway would not only take up a lot of space but also perhaps be detrimental to a relaxed atmosphere for pedestrians.
Cookson Smith continued: “Ninety-nine percent of harborfront users will be pedestrians of all ages so effectively cutting these alignments in half [if half the space were reserved for a bike lane], be they promenades or boardwalks, is highly questionable from various perspectives.”