Blooming cops on wrong scent in Flower Market bust
Plus lawmakers work hard to keep hoi-polloi out of their favourite tunnel; and a railings report the govt doesn't want you to read
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For whom the off-peak tolls?
Lawmakers yesterday gave the government a hard time over the tunnel congestion pricing plan: no surprise there, but while most newspapers presented the lawmakers as genuine truth-seekers clamouring for hard data before decisions are made, read between the lines and you have a group of some of the richest and most Alphard-agile professionals in the city desperately trying to cling onto their beloved (and generally traffic free) Western Harbour Crossing (WHC).
That tunnel is like a secret passageway for those who can afford the (extortionate) toll and it's generally the fastest option during daylight hours for most cross-harbour trips between HK Island and west/central Kowloon. Most lawmakers use it1, John Lee uses it, even President Xi used it2. And while lawmakers are sorta-OK with the idea of congestion charging as a vague notion, they're demanding any price levers keep the WHC absolutely clear for their own waking hours. To this end, they're against any reduction in the WHC peak-hour toll and have now proposed drastic off-peak toll cuts while keeping the day-toll pricey: DAB's Chan Han-pan, that beacon for the working class, proposed a $10 WHC toll after midnight to encourage vans and trucks to work "in the small hours" (and, presumably, to keep those dirty trucks away from his luxury fleet of seven-seaters during his days and evenings). Independent Yang Wing-kit (pictured, with his plan) proposed $30 for WHC off-peak and $15 at night, keeping the other tunnels even cheaper during the day to stop WHC becoming too congested. DAB's Chan Hok-fung said "none of us are happy", as they had expected the government to solve the traffic problem as the WHC was returned to government hands. "Now when you take back the WHC it will become a headache, instead of giving us happiness it will be an unhappy event".
And DAB's Ngan Man-yu said he got the idea for off-peak price cuts while paying for a $140 car wash (his garage charges just $100 for a wash after midnight – light-bulb moment for Ngan).
At least FTU's Joephy Chan made a killer point: 60% of the traffic through cross-harbour tunnels is private cars but cars representing only 20% of the people travelling through the tunnels. She asked why the government's plans did nothing to stem the rise of private cars, and, in asking, urged Transport & Logistics Secretary not to repeat the same copy-paste answers already trotted out a dozen times during the meeting (which, she claimed, were "so boring, I nearly got up and left the conference room").
Secretary Lam, of course, ignored her request, trotting out the same answers until time was up. The government’s proposals will come out in the form of a legislative amendment next year: expect a battle if the Alphard-lovers sniff the slightest friction to their daily journeys.
Good cops or bad cops? Flower market bust misses the point
We ran into a major police operation at the Flower Market yesterday (my four year old: "did someone steal some flowers?"). Cops and fire officers were trying to see if a fully-loaded fire truck could get down those oft-blocked streets. So was this good policing or bad policing?
Good cops: because the Flower Market is an institution. Every shop in the district breaks the law daily by displaying everything from flowers to Christmas trees and gigantic stone vases on the public highway and pavements. But this has been tolerated so long (like, 50 years?), so it would hardly be fair to come in and bust it up without some serious community consultation3. By checking for the absolutely minimum in safety – that a fire truck can get through – the police are showing excellent community spirit and restraint and perhaps paving a way where actual revealed use of a street dictates future urban planning.
Bad cops: because the trouble around there isn't the flowers displayed on the street, it's traffic and illegal parking. Double-parked cars block the street and pedestrian crossings, pushing other cars and motorbikes onto the pavement quite regularly. The pedestrian crossings are narrow and crowded, and cars take very little care driving past them. 100% of the time we cross Sai Yee Street, a car sneaks through the crossing on green man – one did today despite about 40 cops walking just ahead of them.
This bad policing is ignoring the real problems and completely failing to enforce laws which could keep the area safe and thriving. Going into flower shops and berating the owners isn't going to change anything – in fact, a prediction: if the flower shops did clear the roads of blooms, we'd see a situation like in Mong Kok's Sai Yeung Choi Street South, where pedestrian zones were shut down and IMMEDIATELY (and quite tragically) filled with double-parked cars.
Caged pedestrians: the railings report the HK govt doesn't want you to read
Who knew: trying to keep pedestrians in steel cages actually makes our roads more dangerous!
Someone sent me this useful report about railings removal in London, which I was very excited to read until I realised it was from 2017... still, if anyone feels like reigniting that old battle, there's some great data in here, including that the removal of railings at 70 London sites led to a fall of 56% in the number of killed/seriously injured pedestrians (against a 7% fall across the whole city over the same period, for context). “Railings can sometimes give drivers ‘tunnel vision’ and a feeling that pedestrians are safely tucked behind them. Without the railings people tend to cross in more locations on an ‘ad hoc’ basis. Rather than this being more dangerous, the feeling that pedestrians could step out from anywhere appears to make drivers slow down and pay more care and attention." says the report. It's not rocket science. But the Central Government will probably send a Hong Konger into space before our traffic tsars fix the railing problem...
Transit Jam headlines
80-YR-OLD TAXI DRIVER PASSES OUT AT WHEEL, CRUSHING CYCLIST TO DEATH
PASSENGERS IN PERIL: MTR TO STUDY OTHER RAILWAYS AFTER SPATE OF BLUNDERS
NEW TSEUNG KWAN O CYCLE BRIDGE “A VERY WELCOME DEVELOPMENT”
ILLEGAL E-BIKES SOAR IN POPULARITY: 76% OF TST DELIVERY BICYCLES ARE ELECTRIC
Hong Kong road safety
Weekly crash stats: Monday 31 Oct to Sunday 6 Nov, 2022
Traffic crashes: 534
Traffic crashes with injury: 144
Weekly average crashes with injury: 277 (2022 to end Oct)
Dashcam of the Week
I watched this one with dread: a recumbent cyclist on a busy road, in a year which already feels more deadly to people on bikes. People don’t post videos on dash channels unless something awful or very stupid happens… but nothing happened! Hurray! Not hurray to the OP (or the comments) who seemed to think the rider had a death-wish simply being on a bicycle in the road. Recumbents are, of course, the thinking-man’s bike (nerdy chemist genius Gale Boetticher rode one in Breaking Bad4) but I don't really get all the hate. Or why they've never really taken off in any serious way.
Oh and here’s an angry Tesla driver nearly causing a bus crash. It’s these angry drivers and road rage which are the most scary on the roads. Idiots can be anticipated, but murderous rage in a 2-ton, high-power weapon, it’s not a fair fight.
OK something happy to end on, here’s two porcupines crossing the road unscathed :+)
Although kudos to Stanley Li Sai-wing who yesterday revealed he generally takes the train from Tai Po.
Nobody knows if he or his 100-car entourage paid any toll.
The fact that I, chief complainer of blocked pavements, choose to walk that way with my stroller and kids, despite knowing the pavement is narrowed to about 1 metre by horticulture, perhaps shows there's a massive upside to the market's activities: it smells great, it's super fun for the kids and there's quite a few friendly cats lurking in the undergrowth.
Actually he was never seen riding one, he just had one on the top of his car once.