Hong Kong Secretary dismisses concerns over new bridge

Hong Kong lawmaker Leung Yiu-chung brought the issue of public concern regarding an increase in vehicles on Hong Kong roads and the consequence on traffic congestion up in a legislative enquiry.

He said that residents in the neighboring SAR were “worried that the persistent increase in the quotas for cross-boundary vehicles will overload the local traffic network further, making the shortage of parking spaces more acute, and resulting in more traffic accidents.”

In response, Hong Kong’s Secretary for Transport and Housing, Frank Chan, argued that the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge (HKZMB) was expected to bring significant development benefits to the three regions of Hong Kong, Macau and south-coastal Guangdong, and that the cost in terms of an increase in the number of vehicles in Hong Kong was marginal.

“The total number of non-local cross-boundary vehicles is less than 1 percent as compared with the local vehicles registered in Hong Kong,” said Chan, “and hence the impact is not significant.”

The Secretary also said that the traffic accident rate of mainland cross-boundary private cars was much lower than that of local private cars. “Taking the figure in 2017 as an example, the average accident rate of the mainland cross-
boundary private cars is 2.2 vehicles (per 1,000 vehicles) which is lower than the corresponding figure of 15.8 (per 1,000 vehicles) of local private cars,” he said.

Meanwhile, in a related matter, emergency rescue support for operations along the HKZMB have been prepared for the bridge’s opening, according to a report by Macao Daily News.

At the end of last year, the HKZMB’s main rescue service called for public tenders from the mainland, with the successful tenderer providing professional bridge facility rescue services for a three-year period. A batch of 45 vehicles specializing in emergency rescue and maintenance arrived at the bridge’s responsible concessionaire in April.

HKZMB’s management, last December, and during the following months of January and March, openly recruited staff for rescue operations. The staff will serve around-the-clock in the bridge’s operation.

The HKZMB rescue base is located mainly on Zhuhai and Macau’s artificial island.

On the eastern part of the island, an integrated operation center combining transportation, management, rescue and sightseeing functions, has been built. It also houses the rescue equipment.

Earlier, HKZMB’s management department said that the bridge’s management, rescue, and road administration, among other services, have all been prepared according to professional and international standards.

Hong Kong authorities have previously said that, when an accident takes place on the HKZMB and an emergency rescue service is needed, both mainland and Hong Kong authorities will deploy rescue ambulances, with whichever is first to arrive is obliged to initiate the rescue operations immediately, taking into consideration the fact that the rescue does not involve immigration arrangements.