A bridge too far
Christine Loh Kung-wai is chief executive of the think-tank Civic Exchange. cloh@civic-exchange.org
Naturally we want Hong Kong’s transport system to be connected to the one on the mainland. The problem is that we don’t have the vital facts about some of the plans on the table. Two of the most expensive projects – the Hong Kong-Guangzhou-Shenzhen express rail link and the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge – need proper scrutiny and perhaps even a rethink. Yet, we seem to have missed a crucial point.
Regional rail development plans show a web of rail and rapid-transit lines linking cities in the Pearl River Delta. There is already a train link from Hung Hom to Lo Wu and on to Guangzhou. This service will continue.
We can already get from Central and Kowloon to Lo Wu by MTR and then cross the border to take a fast train from Shenzhen to Guangzhou. There is also a good underground rail system from Lo Wu to help us get around Shenzhen.
The new express rail link will run from West Kowloon, through Lok Ma Chau and Shenzhen, to the new Shibi railway hub southwest of Guangzhou, where passengers will need to change trains if they wish to get into the heart of the city.
Many people in Hong Kong were shocked to hear that the service would not actually terminate in Guangzhou. Taking transit arrangements into account, it won’t, in fact, be nearly as convenient as people have assumed.
We may be missing something here, though: the key Shibi interchange connects to major rail lines to the west and central parts of China, such as to Guizhou and Wuhan . The high-speed line was never planned to end in Guangzhou but, instead, as a joining point for long-distance travel.
Let’s leave this point for the time being and focus on something else: the express rail link will stop in Dongguan , then Panyu at Shibi. This means we can get from West Kowloon to these places in 30 and 40 minutes, respectively. These stops are connected to new, rapid intercity rail systems to areas in Foshan , Shunde , Zhongshan , Zhuhai and even Jiangmen . The rail networks will link tens of millions of people in the delta counties.
The alternative would be to take buses across the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge, or perhaps drive across in a car. Surely, for most people, the train will be the best option.
Indeed, why would we want to use the bridge at all? This piece of infrastructure is not exactly cheap. It is still unclear how much the toll fee will be.
We need to compare that with the price and speed of rail. Has such a comparison been done and the information made available to the public? It does not appear so.
Throw in the environmental impact of the bridge, especially on marine habitats, and the project suddenly looks even less attractive, and more risky.
The good news is that we already have a train service to Guangzhou from Hung Hom. This could be re-routed to West Kowloon, so that both the through train and the express link start and end at the same place.
This is not a new idea and it will certainly not be a surprise to the MTR Corporation, which now runs all rail lines in Hong Kong. The existing service could be re-routed to join the high speed line at an appropriate point in the New Territories.
Looking at it this way, the express rail link doesn’t have to be a disappointment; people should realise that they can get to many parts of the delta using rail services already planned across the border, as well as much further across the country.
Not building the bridge would save a vast amount of money, and the environmental impact of re-routing a small section of railway line is likely to be much less.
The problem is not the express rail link – it is the bridge. Recent reports about the high cost of building an underground station at West Kowloon would look very different if we abandoned the bridge plans altogether.
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