Gov’t forecasts a movement of 40,000 people over new bridge

Lam Hin San (center)

The government is expecting a movement of around 40,000 people circulating in and out of the region per day via the new Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge (HKZMB) once it begins operation in the summer. As for vehicles, the forecast figure is about 4,000 on a daily basis, the director of the Transport Bureau (DSAT) Lam Hin San said yesterday at a press conference. 

“This is a preliminary forecast, for the start, if we see that [the demand] is higher than this [then] we can adjust and find other ways to manage,” Lam said.

He added that the current forecast points to the total number of vehicles using the bridge reaching 29,100 by 2030. Of this number, 22,000 would pertain to traffic between Guangdong province and Hong Kong and 7,100 would pertain to traffic between the two special administrative regions.

Explaining how the procedures and traffic arrangements will accommodate the new infrastructure operation, Lam said that there are two parking lots, located in the east and west of the artificial island under Macau jurisdiction. Those facilities will accommodate the vehicles from Macau and those travelling from the other regions.

The parking lot in the west designated for Macau vehicles has a total of about 7,000 parking spaces, of which 5,000 are for cars and 2,000 are for motorcycles. As for the east, it will have a total of 3,000 parking spaces available, which will require a prior reservation and fare payment made through a mobile app for that specific purpose. Vehicles from abroad with authorization travelling over the bridge will pay a fare of MOP180 for 12 hours of parking, that is, MOP15 per hour.

Questioned as to the possibility that people would not make an advance booking of the parking space, Lam said, “[In that case] there is no possibility of parking, the only possibility is to make a U-turn and go back to Hong Kong.”

Also settled is the number of bus routes that will connect the two SARs (50), since 34 of them start from Hong Kong and 16 from Macau.

According to Lam, this system will allow “a frequency of five minutes during peak hours and of 10 to 15 minutes in the hours of less movement,” adding, “as for the nighttime, the frequency might drop [tentatively] to 15 to 30 minutes.”

How much a bus ticket will cost to or from Hong Kong was one of the several questions that the director of the Bureau could not answer, claiming, “we are still negotiating on this matter. It’s a three party negotiation [among the different jurisdictions]. Soon we will have the information and at that time we will disclose such information,” he said.

Battling with the lack of space, the DSAT director added that casino shuttle buses operators agreed on a quota of only two routes. The same will apply to the public transportation system, which will create the routes 101X and 102X, the first connecting the checkpoint to Central Macau and the second to Taipa.

As for the casino shuttles, the two authorized routes, which will need to be shared among all the concessionaires, will connect only the artificial island to both Ferry Terminals (Outer Harbour and Taipa) “from where the passengers must be transferred to the ‘normal’ system that has been operating and that will take them to each hotel,” Lam remarked, adding that it will be also mandatory for such shuttles to use “alternative energies” as fuel.

Quotas will also be enforced for rental of inter-urban vehicles and private vehicles from both regions. In the former case, the number of vehicles will be limited to 100 (40 in Macau) and in the latter, a total of 900 private vehicles (600 in Macau, 300 in Hong Kong).

Questioned as to the rules of attribution of these special authorizations and discrepancies between such figures, Lam explained, “the special licenses will be attributed by lucky draw and then there will be an amount that [will] have to be paid,” adding, “Macau has 600 and Hong Kong only 300 [cars quota] just because we have less parking space to keep those cars than Hong Kong, that can hold more cars. That’s the only reason.”

Lam also clarified that direct buses from Macau and to Hong Kong’s airport are “still in [the] negotiation process and should not be in place before 2020,” adding, “for the time being, people will have to take a bus from Macau, drop-off by the immigration check-point in [Hong Kong] and then after such process, get another transportation to the Airport. In the future we will have a direct bus without passing through the immigration checkpoint,” he noted.

Questioned as to the difficulties of getting connections into places and on the use of the infrastructure for Macau people, Lam said, “maybe to go to Disneyland … the HKZM Bridge [will be useful]. To go to Central Hong Kong, the ferry may be more useful.”

40 percent of users do not pay parking meter fares

About 40 percent of the users of street parking spaces in Macau do not pay the parking meter fare, the Transport Bureau (DSAT) revealed yesterday during the Transport Advisory Committee meeting at the bureau.

During the press conference, DSAT director Lam Hin San announced the figure adding that they are now “considering to install [parking] sensors that will automatically alert the authorities through a mobile app that will also allow a monitoring of the vacant parking spaces.”

“We will install 1,000 of these sensors as a trial on the streets with more [activity] in order to increase the responsibility [of the motorists] and to increase the mobility of citizens.”

According to Lam, an increase in the parking meter fares could not necessarily be linked to a decrease of their usage.

As for the public parking lots, the director said that after the increase to the fares, there was a decrease in the occupancy in the first few months but that most recently this occupancy has resumed to the “normally high,” registering occupancy rates from 80 percent to 100 percent in all the 13 public parking lots that are monitored.