Policy expert calls new public transport road map ‘incomplete homework’, says it fails to address three major challenges
Polytechnic University’s Dr Hung Wing-tat says report doesn’t provide answers on impact of railway expansion on road transport, accessibility for elderly and disabled, and environmental issues
The city’s newly unveiled public transport strategy blueprint fails to address three major challenges, according to a veteran transport policy expert, who described the plan as a piece of incomplete “homework” left for the next administration to work on.
Dr Hung Wing-tat, an associate professor in Polytechnic University’s civil and environmental engineering department, said the report had not provided answers on how to mitigate the impact of the city’s massive railway expansion on road transport business and jobs, which had been losing out as more new MTR lines opened.
Nor did it present novel ideas on how to make public transportation more accessible to disabled and elderly people, or how to address the environmental impact of more buses and commercial transport on the streets, he said.
“The entire report did not lock on to any of these three main challenges. There was no obvious direction showing how the government would address them, or what the costs – because in the end it all comes down to money – are,” Hung said in a radio interview on Thursday.
He said the plan gave him the “feeling” of “a piece of homework that has not been completed”.