Our Desk | The long-awaited BIG ferry terminal

Renato Marques

After 12 long years in the making, the recently inaugurated Taipa Maritime Terminal started to operate on the first day of this month.

Taking the risk of stating the obvious, the first impression I had when visiting it for the first time was: It’s huge!

That’s a fact. The ferry terminal is huge and it’s huge in many different ways that go way beyond its size.

It has already been reported that besides the MOP3.8 billion construction costs, the 200,000-square-meter mega-structure comes with the price tag of over MOP100 million in estimated annual operating expenses.

So to summarize, it is big, it was expensive to build in the first place and will be a heavy burden to maintain.

Apart from all this that we already know, there is another issue that concerns me. It obviously has to do with the expected opening of the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge (HKZMB), “this year,” according to Central Government sources.

The English version news of The State Council of the People’s Republic of China says that “Insiders estimate that the bridge will open to traffic on December 20, when Macau celebrates the 18th anniversary of its return to China from Portuguese control.”

Although (strangely) there are not many estimates for the expected passenger flow through the mega-project, which connects the banks of Pearl River Delta (PRD), a study from the early days of the project conducted by the Department of Building and Real Estate of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University claimed that by 2020 the HKZMB is expected to be accountable for the transportation of “38-54 million passengers… per annum,” with a flow of “43,000 to 59,000 vehicles per day.”

Logical thinking leads us to the question: If the bridge aims to be – as the project states – an important link between the three regions, “significantly reducing the cost and time for commuters /travelers and for the flow of goods between Hong Kong and the Western PRD,” how many passengers will we expect to be detoured from the ferry connection to this new, faster and allegedly cheaper option?

And if this is the great alternative to maritime transportation, what can we expect to happen to ferry travel?

Again, logical thinking tells us that the transport by sea would register a decrease as the new road link enters into operation – should it prove to be a better option for the passengers – although the Macau government is seemingly following another logic. That is that maritime transportation will increase in the future.

This is presumably why the Taipa Maritime Terminal is now operating at only half of its capacity and yet is expected to put into full operation its 16 bridge-quays for fast ferries and three multipurpose berths.

Another acknowledgment made by the government is that it “might take another year [or more]” before restaurants, shops and tourist services can commence operation; a situation that again in my humble opinion would not benefit the maritime transportation option.

In fact, even Susana Wong, director of the Marine and Water Bureau, told the media on the sidelines of the opening event that the “half-hearted” terminal would be “mostly targeting large tour groups as individual travelers are expected to still continue to prefer to travel through the Outer Harbor Ferry Terminal [on the peninsula],” suggesting that the Taipa Maritime Terminal lacks either logic or timing.