Editor's Pick 2022: carnage, gaslighting and corruption
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A year of road carnage, gaslighting and corruption
I rang in January 1, 2022 on a blood-stained street in San Po Kong after a BMW driver ploughed into a pavement at speed, killing two pedestrians late on New Year’s Eve. 365 days later I'd be spending New Year's Day 2023 standing on a (thankfully blood-free) Lohas Park slipway filming the rescue of an overturned double-decker. Symbolic bookends for a year with an estimated 88 road deaths (two-thirds of those pedestrians, cyclists or passengers) and no sign of any real improvement in the death and carnage on our streets.
Transit Jam's top stories for 2022, by viewing figures, were about minibus passengers getting fined for not wearing seatbelts, Jumbo's "fishy" sinking1 and the massive road programme which will destroy Lantau Island2.
But my personal favourites are here, the reason I get out of bed in the morning, hold government and businesses to account.
# 1: Impact reporting
Our exposure of the HKPC's $1 billion slush fund being awarded to the same people doing the application vetting has actually tightened oversight and (to my immense joy) caused much grumbling amongst folk at Arup (and probably Atkins, AECOM etc) and other researchers enjoying the previously easy money of HK transport research subsidies. They now have to diligently make a case for taxpayer money and while it's still pretty easy to wring dollars from the government, the days of rubber-stamping applications are over.
# 2: The most harrowing story of the year
The mystery of the girl killed on an e-trike on Cheung Chau. Her grandfather claimed she simply fell off the stationary trike, suffering a fatal head wound. He told 999 that “no police were required” and when friendly local police did eventually show up, they seemed to have accepted his story without investigation. Many questions still unanswered on this. While the presumption of innocence holds, it's fairly obvious from the scene and the wounds that the DOJ should have pursued a charge of dangerous driving causing death (as well as lying to police, covering up evidence and anything else you could think of regarding a man who would allegedly lie about how a five-year-old girl met her death). The dozy corrupt police on Cheung Chau should all be fired (and jailed) for the cosy way they simply accepted the grandfather's story with minimal investigation or preservation of the crime scene.
# 3: The coveted Transit Jam "Pants on Fire" award
The "Pants of Fire" Award 2022 goes to HKSAR's Transport Department for covering up its Walk HK failures after a fatal crash (and then repeatedly lying about covering it up). I'd like to say this story had an impact, but our government has become so shameless about lying that even being exposed in a registered newspaper has changed absolutely nothing. The issue of getting tender information (and even things like Town Planning Board applications) remains tricky, with great difficulties finding out where and how our public money is being spent. For example, Transport Department also lied about having the blueprints to the new electric ferries we taxpayers will buy for the ferry firms. There was no legal way to get hold of the tender – and given the government's eagerness to arrest and convict journalists, even those simply doing a numberplate search, I wasn't about to step into any gray areas to obtain it.
Freedom of the press, in case John Lee is reading this, is not just about keeping writers out of handcuffs. It's about respect for freedom of information and public transparency, sharing the crucial documents behind public spending and answering questions on the process and outcomes. For example, how were $350 million of ferry tenders or $13 million of “walk” consultancies awarded? The entire government is guilty of this lately, with tenders older than a few months now deleted, no archives available, and outright lies from the government when questioning the reasoning behind purchase decisions. Transport Department led this slow descent into the swamp and was, I believe, the first to start deleting old tender records.
# 4: Apathy and profit-seeking destroying public space
The "Nobody in HK Really Gives a Shit Any More" award goes jointly to the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority and the Harbourfront Commission. West Kowloon not only concreted over lawns (and still plans yet more concrete car parks) but also regularly uses the surviving lawns for awful retail exhibitions (Samsung & BMW the most recent). Running West Kowloon as a genuine park, not a money-making venture, would probably be the only way to restore that space to a decent outdoor venue3 but WKCDA only sees dollar signs from the restaurants spewing out a steady stream of fatty smoke and bored-looking wallet-stripped punters. Sadly, not even the Harbourfront Commission stood up to this egregious theft of seaside space: one member told me it’s not worth the battle and I should go do something I enjoy rather than getting angry about stuff. Sure, “don’t rock the boat” will make you rich and comfortable in the new era of Xi Jinping's Greater Bay Area but it's not going to build a bay area worth leaving to our kids.
# 5: Shenanigans at Hong Kong's bus company
I knew I was onto something when Bravo's Head of Corporate Communications blocked me on LinkedIn – but questions have to be asked and if officials at a public transport firm won’t respond to emails or calls then LinkedIn was worth a try. This apparently annoyed Andy Tsang On-tik4 who blocked me and still won't speak to me even in person at a trade show! No matter, he probably doesn't actually know what's going on anyway.
The story is complex: two of Hong Kong’s larger franchised bus companies (soon to be one firm, CityBus) are owned by an investment fund which also owns an e-bus maker, Wisdom Fujian, in the mainland. And guess where all the e-bus orders are going, without tender? Government doesn’t see this as a problem. But it’s a massive failure of transparency and oversight in public transport and it’s only going to get worse as orders for next-gen buses ramp up.
I’m still waiting for other media to connect the dots or at least just pick up on some of the conflicts – in the meantime, I also managed to expose Wisdom's relationship with dodgy US/Chinese firm Hyzon, thanks to a backstage peek at a bus claimed by Wisdom as its own but still "accidentally" sporting a Hyzon logo. Apparently NBD, Wisdom folk told me. But given Hyzon’s been exposed in the US as a heartbeat away from fraud5, these connections are worth sniffing at.
And a few other favourites…
The concrete plant which refuses to shut down
If this story came out of Karachi or Kabul it might not be a surprise, but Hong Kong? Two massive concrete plants operating illegally and refusing to shut down despite repeated orders from the government? Best part of the story was finding the owner of the plant had bought an honorary consul title to the Democratic Republic of Congo - it didn't have much sway on the story itself, as, sources told me, no way to use that title to further the illegal plant operation, but it was a nice touch of the sort of back-scratching and favours that money can buy in our corrupt little Democratic Republic of Hong Kong.
Picture is from the wonderfully-renovated Museum of Coastal Defence, where I came up with a new idea to shut these plants down (they are right on target!)
Misogynist Idiot of the Year
Some said we were too harsh on DAB's Ben Chan Han-pan for his comments on women drivers. If Chan was a force for good in the community we'd give him a pass, but he's Head of Transport Policy for DAB, HK's largest political party. He owns at least two seven-seater cars, drives everywhere, calls for more parking and hates cycling (DAB has called for cyclists to need driving licences). His "Register of Interests" forms, legal documents required from Chan as a LegCo lawmaker, were littered with "mistakes" which would have seen a pro-dem lawmaker sacked from office (and which seem to be revealing up all sorts of shell-firm ownerships). So no, we will not give him a pass: Ben Chan is Misogynist Idiot of the Year!
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Transit Jam headlines
PASSENGER HURLED FROM CAB, KILLED, AS TAXI STRIKES ILLEGALLY PARKED CONTAINER TRUCK
TRUCK DRIVER ARRESTED AFTER FATAL MONG KOK CRASH
LOHAS BUS CRASH MYSTERY INVESTIGATION DEEPENS, DRIVER ARRESTED
Hong Kong road safety
Weekly crash stats: Monday 26 Dec, 2022 to Sunday 1 Jan, 2023
Traffic crashes: 583
Traffic crashes with injury: 148
Weekly average crashes with injury: 280 (2022 to end Nov)
Dashcam of the Week
Group gatherings are back! So we got together for an urban ride! This will be a regular Saturday thing, all welcome to join. Organiser Anthony was also the brains behind Hong Kong’s first Bike Train in 2019, something we’re thinking about doing again for Earth Day next year, watch this space.
Also, an old one, but a beauty and it’s just resurfaced… we’ve had a spate of fools crashing supercars in HK lately, here’s a very rare *cockpit view* from an idiot in a Ferrari 812 Superfast turning off traction control losing it on the 20mph-limit Lambeth Bridge, London.
Not our core beat, shipping, but it was silly summer solstice season and I had a good source, seemed a shame not to write about it…. this associated silliness also amused some lovelies over on Twitter
And thanks as ever to people who amplified our stories, in these cases Big Lychee (which reliably gets us more clicks than when we were featured in the NY Times) and Clean Air Network which shared the hell out of our Lantau story. Minibus seatbelts, of course, shared itself, understandable outrage from all quarters at the cops once again picking on the wrong folk.
Although then LCSD might step in and ban one-year-olds scootering.
This also ties into earlier comments about freedom of the press – if large public firms hide from accredited registered media, we don’t have freedom of the press.
Favourite quote from the Rochester Beacon, from analysts covering the sector: Hyzon is a “repackaging of a flailing Chinese hydrogen-fuel-cell business covered in a glittering new wrapper of misleading deal announcements, illusory customer contracts, and fantastical financial projections.”