Pedestrian Planning: No Clear Path

Hong Kong’s streets are like no other place in the world, and walking though the city’s streets is part of what knits us into such a unique community. Unlike the inhabitants of car-reliant North America, walking is a daily activity for us all. With one of the world’s best public transport systems, we walk from home to the station or bus stop; we use our feet to shop, eat or simply wander, taking in the vibrant street life that surrounds us. We city-dwellers love it, and why not? It’s carbon-neutral and it keeps us fit.

But why, then, are pedestrians so often treated like second-class citizens? We are forced onto footbridges or channeled into tunnels to make the roads more easily navigable for cars and buses. Meanwhile, we’re continually blocked at street level by railings, advertising stands, trolleys and Falun Gong banner wars. What has happened to the streets of Hong Kong? Why is walking anywhere so very difficult? Can anything be done?

Bridging the Gap

If you want spend an afternoon feeling depressed, take a trip to the new town of Tin Shui Wai. Emerge from the MTR station and you’re treated to a 15-minute walk before you even reach the first traffic light.

There’s absolutely nothing for a person at ground level to look at or interact with—just a long, huge, concrete sidewalk without a single shop. At the junction of Tin Wah Road, the pavement disappears entirely, forcing pedestrians to climb up to the footbridges which link three shopping malls (all, Incidentally, managed by the same company). This place has long been known as the “town of sadness,” and it’s pretty evident how it earned the title.

 

Central footbridge and TST's subway labyrinth

Increasingly, street-level crossings in Hong Kong are being wiped out, and pedestrians are being directed to wander through life on a succession of footbridges and underground tunnels. While Hong Kong is dense and some layering is necessary, these aerial networks keep us away from our own streets, and our own sense of community. “Street level is more important,” says Paul Zimmerman, the chief executive officer of non-profit Designing Hong Kong. “Elevated networks are always going to be in private territory. Most footbridges are just links between A and B, [but on streets] you can make choices. You can suddenly decide to do something else. There’s variety. That’s public space.” It’s this freedom of choice, he emphasizes, that brings the ownership of walking spaces back to the citizenry, and out of the hands of the management companies. After all, we can’t spend our lives in the clouds.

Car City

Pass by a traffic black spot in the city and you’ll see a police sign encouraging road safety. It’s an image of a pedestrian being hit by a car. The slogan reads: “Be careful when crossing the road.” The driver? Not shown. It’s a sign that perfectly sums up the attitude the authorities have towards us.

This car-oriented planning philosophy, so deeply embedded in the minds of the city’s transport officials, underpins the problems of road design in Hong Kong. Traffic engineers seem to believe that their sole mission is to keep roads congestion-free, and they believe that the best way of doing that is by segregating pedestrians and vehicles. With this in mind it’s easy to see why transport officials persist in building footbridges and underpasses at the expense of street-level crossings. Annoying pedestrians need to be diverted, so as not to obstruct the flow of vehicles.

“From the 1950s to the 1970s, everything was completely car-oriented,” says landscape architect Gavin Coates. “The result is an extremely unfriendly environment for pedestrians. Our transport and highways department still seems to be locked into this 1960s thinking. London, New York, Paris, all these places have moved on… there has been a dramatic shift in terms of their thinking: how does our city fall? It’s for people, not for cars.”

 

 

Cars rage through Mong Kok

This vehicles-first mentality is absurd in terms of demographics. According to the Transport Department’s 2012 transport digest, there are 471,685 private cars registered in Hong Kong. That means that only about 6.67 percent of the population owns a car—the number is doubtless lower, with so many multi-vehicle homes. If the majority of the population doesn’t own a car, why are drivers given such leeway?

A woeful lack of care about pedestrian welfare has resulted in a woeful lack of research about foot traffic. “There is very little data about pedestrian flow. The Highways Department has a standard [for walkways]: if there is certain amount of foot traffic, the roads need a certain amount of space. However, it is only a minimal standard,” says Professor Becky Loo, who teaches geography at the University of Hong Kong. “For example, if I want statistics on the vehicle flow on Bonham Road, I just need to look at the Transport Department’s Annual Traffic Census, or give the department a call: they can answer instantly. But if you ask them about the number of pedestrians—no one has an answer.”
 

Off The Rails

Walking in Hong Kong sometimes feels like walking inside a never-ending cage. Unbroken stretches of railing run into the distance and hem us in, forcing us to walk longer distances. Why are there so many? Why can’t we just cross the road?

A Transport Department spokesman claims that railings are used for “the control, protection and guidance of pedestrians along footways” and that they also “prevent pedestrians from spilling onto the carriageways near schools, MTR stations or other places where a similar surge of pedestrian flow is expected.” All well and good, perhaps. But the use of railings is far more extensive. They are everywhere: along main roads, along low-traffic sidewalks, even on cycle paths. It’s become a nuisance, and they’re hardly helping the aesthetics of our streets.