Octopus Bridge demolition highlights theft of public space
plus bike parking nonsense and Hong Kong's deadly new tax office
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Humans cross Pavilia Farm road barely quicker than Banana Slugs
End of an era yesterday as part of the Octopus Pedestrian Bridge connecting Tin Sam Village and Tai Wai station was sealed up and prepared for demolition, part of the mass development around the shaky Pavilia Farm residential project1.
At exactly 11am, workers shifted barricades across the northwest-side access ramps and began filling them with water. Locals who've been using the bridge for around 40 years immediately began questioning the alternative route. "You have to go through the mall," explained a worker in a hardhat.
Off they trooped into the half-finished mall ("The Wai", not open until 2023), grumbling about the stairs. I asked the hardhat for confirmation, as the diversion seemed a bit out of the way. Was there really no better connection from the bridge to the street?
Apparently not. This "mall route" isn't a temporary solution, this is now the proper route from Mei Tin Road across to Tin Sam Village: a lengthy detour through the ghastly MTR mall corridors snaking underneath the Pavilia Farm residential towers. Dystopian posters scream at the pedestrians "Work Hard So You Can Shop More".
Now, it's barely 80 metres from Mei Tin Road to the ancient village opposite. A fit Yellow Sea Slug, one of the slowest land creatures on the planet, could do it point-to-point in 10 minutes. With the new mall-route imposed on pedestrians, crossing from A to B as a human takes seven minutes. The subtext, of course, is that you shouldn't be such a peasant, getting around the way Tin Sam villagers did in the 16th century, you should work hard to be able to shop for a shiny new Alphard and have all those lovely protected tarmac surfaces to speed around on.
As a side note, Hysan this week put forward some sort of bridge/covered walkway for its Lee Gardens & Caroline Hill developments: there are friends of Hysan who say the firm has good intentions for walkability. But if a covered walkway project means losing street-level space or function, as Tai Wai lost all those years ago with its Octopus Bridge, such a project will end up just encouraging more cars and more danger for those who don’t/can’t use the bridge. The "barrier free" aspect then becomes all about putting in an elevator or escalator, the busy "carbon offsets" of walkability (and as an Audit Commission report found this year, one new bridge project at Anderson Road suffered 183 lift outages in 3 years, with an average of 10 hours each). Indeed, the escalator at The Wai was out within MINUTES of the new pedestrian route opening, resulting in long queues for the lift or elderly struggling up the metal stairs, with no regular staircase as a backup.
Hysan made no mention of its luxury mall plans during the long debate over the Caroline Hill project (it was supposed to be a community centre?) and I for one would strongly oppose any loss of street function to luxury retail.
Bike parking meh
The reason I was hanging around The Wai in the first place was to celebrate the city's largest new indoor bicycle parking lot: 330 spaces and a nice ramp up from the street. This is good and, with a 1:1 cycle-car parking ratio, a massive improvement on nearly all Hong Kong developments ancient and modern.
But… (and I did go along with an open mind genuinely happy about the new thing) WHY OH WHY must the cyclists be forced to use the Octopus Bridge? It's a mess of broken cycle track, "dismount" signs and crossed paths, meaning the access to the mall and cycle parking from all but one side requires a lot of unnecessary gradient, a lot of dismounting and faffing around. Because of the track above, it's illegal for people on bikes to use the nice roundabout below, which is a shame because the road network easily the fastest and most sensible way to get around the junction. Could we (as a society) please reconsider the rule which REQUIRES cyclists to use the road if there’s a cycle track within spitting distance?
New tax office is gonna get someone killed
The government's Revenue Tower is shifting to Kai Tak, with movers lugging in thousands of boxes of ancient paperwork and almost all tax and Business Registration functions hailing from the brand new tower by mid-January.
The promo leaflet promises "Easy Access" (as if access could be any easier than the old Wan Chai landmark) but that's a lie: in fact, if coming by MTR you have to cross the two dual carriageways of Concorde Road (a road as fast as its namesake) without any signal crossing. Signs remind pedestrians to "please use the pedestrian crossing", but those crossings are simply dropped kerbs with a "LOOK LEFT" or "LOOK RIGHT" painted onto the road.
It's not a pleasant experience. When I crossed over the first time, the dropped kerb was blocked by a delivery van, so it was a case of peering out as trucks sped by at 60kph and then making a dash for it. Coming the other way, a big crowd of pedestrians had gathered unable to get a space in the traffic coming off the roundabout. There was just a steady stream of cars and trucks and not one driver thought to let the growing crowd have a chance at getting across.
In fact a 68-year-old woman was killed just a hundred yards away from IRD's new home on exactly one of those dropped kerb crossings. That was four months ago and nothing seems to have improved for people on foot since then. If you're going to the new site to get your BR renewed or sort out your tax, please take care!
(And, breaking, the new Immigration Tower, already the scene of one fatal worker incident, had a crane collapse yesterday afternoon. Luckily nobody hurt. )
Good news if you like that sort of thing
The wonderful Ali Griswold has gotten into the holiday spirit with a cheerful and optimistic post of all the good things in the sustainable mobility space. Well worth a read and a bookmark: for every Transport Dept “ we can’t possibly do THAT”, some mayor somewhere is getting on with it.
Transit Jam headlines
DRIVER SMASHES SUV THROUGH RAILINGS, HOSPITALISING ELDERLY COUPLE AND MOTHER WITH BABY
HIGH COURT FINDS FOR CHOKEHOLD COP IN TAXI DRIVER DEATH, OVERTURNS “UNLAWFUL KILLING” VERDICT
71-YEAR-OLD MAN ON CRUTCHES KILLED BY REVERSING TRUCK, DRIVER ARRESTED
Hong Kong Road Safety
Weekly crash stats: Monday 19 December to Sunday 25 December, 2022
Traffic crashes: 599
Traffic crashes with injury: 145
Weekly average crashes with injury: 280 (2022 to end Nov)
Dashcam of the Week
Plenty of idiocy on the cams this week, (taxi drivers brawling is quite mesmerising) but two selected for the holidays, entitled: I DON’T KNOW HOW TO DRIVE MY CHRISTMAS PRESENT BUT THAT DOESN’T STOP ME STOMPING ON THE GAS!
Yes, that Pavilia Farm, the New World 'luxury' housing complex where an inspection last year found two of the eight towers had been built with such shoddy concrete they were ordered demolished and rebuilt. Don’t worry though, New World has now rebuilt them and promised “We will ensure that the completed buildings meet all relevant legal and statutory standards for construction quality and safety. We will also commission an independent third party to inspect the apartments and certify that they are safe before handing them over to buyers.”
Hi James! Found the blog through Hong Kong being yellow sea slug slow about EMDs I really like to read about city design through checking our YT channels as Notjustbikes. I passed this bridge quite recently after getting off at the wrong stop going to Tai Wai and I must say it was extremely difficult to find my way through. I don't really understand which part was closed off since it was my first time going through it. The posters are absolutely horrific and remind me of a shop I saw with the name "Let's Buy Hapinness". It is very sad to see this kind of decision being made, specially in Hong Kong with so many elderly.