Sneaky backtrack as govt tries to kill Lion Rock Tunnel cycle lane
plus licensing bicycles (and why that would be an improvement), and a spot of drifting
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Transport Bureau weaponising footnotes
We know there's more flip-flops in the HK government than Tripperhead's wardrobe but this is ridiculous: after Highways Dept did an astounding u-turn into supporting the Lion Rock Tunnel cycle track (and also ordered its consultants AECOM to "be more innovative"1, the greenway project has hit a massive brick wall and is headed back to obscurity.
In fact Transport & Logistics Bureau is trying to kill it with paratext, relegating the whole beautiful zero-carbon plan to just a brief footnote in the Bureau's 10-page briefing on the Lion Rock Tunnel upgrade to lawmakers2.
And it's not a good footnote, starting off with a negative and tailing off from there.
"The proposal [...] will not only affect the prompt opening of the northbound tunnel for emergency vehicle use if needed but will also require consideration of a number of factors," it reads, then claiming that “all stakeholders will be consulted”.
This is exactly the language we got from Highways six months ago and doesn't bode well for the cycle track concept. Highways was under a fair amount of pressure not to dismiss the idea, but they can now say they've done their job. The idea hasn't been dismissed, it's in the design tender. Transport, on the other hand, can use these very real objections to scare lawmakers into voting the thing away or, worse, letting it quietly die out with another footnote along the lines of "stakeholder and lawmaker consultations prioritised tunnel construction speed over greenway features".
The discussion will be taking place this very morning in LegCo's Transport Panel (open to all lawmakers as it involves a capital project) and it will be interesting to see if any of the "patriots ruling Hong Kong" raise the issue of the cycle track. I'm not optimistic: I put the concept to Nixie Lam of the largest legislative party DAB earlier this year: Lam wasn't interested and said I needed to talk to DAB's "transport guy" Chan Han-pan. Chan rejected the idea in two minutes flat, without discussion and with no follow-up entertained.
But the greenway is too important to ignore – without a greenway, the tunnel upgrade cannot go ahead. It will increase traffic 50% and building such a project without a zero-carbon option is a criminally short-sighted move.
Lawmakers propose licenses for bicycles
A cheeky proposal snuck into paragraph 48 of the Transport Panel's annual report to the government: lawmakers support the idea of "introducing a bicycle licensing regime for cyclists riding on carriageways".
In the UK such ideas are regularly floated by angry car drivers on Twitter, usually as part of the Holy Trinity of "why don't cyclists pay road tax, why don't they have to pass a driving test, why aren't their bikes licensed like cars?"
Although it sounds like a horrible, useless and detrimental idea, it would be a step up from current Transport Dept policy. Right now, cyclists are "not recommended" to use carriageways in urban areas, and, by law, are not allowed to use roads in New Territories where a cycle track exists.
From that restrictive position, a law licencing bicycles for roads would actually be a shift in policy from "we do not recommend in urban areas" to "bikes are sanctioned in urban areas". In other words, in the smallest possible way, a win.
That's not to support the idea or even give it any oxygen, but simply to ridicule current policy. Perhaps a debate on bike licencing is just what we need to expose the absurdity and bring some tough questions for the Environment Secretary next time he rocks up at the C40. I believe we are the only city in the world where the government actively discourages cycling in urban areas, a policy which is simply not keeping up with the potential for cycling in commuting, leisure and deliveries. So yeah, bring it on, bozos!
Parke Nicht
A happy visit from my former partner-in-crime who now lives in Berlin, a professional consultant with one foot in street activism. She brought me a couple of stickers quite common in Berlin, these gummy blue "Parke Nicht" labels which are, apparently, a bugger to get off a windscreen. We had printed a bunch of stickers years ago (and got quite a lot of abuse in using them) but perhaps it’s time to revive the idea. Police may have given a record number of parking tickets last year (3,302,160 to be precise, or 9,047 a day) but the scourge gets ever worse, particularly around schools. Citizen action might be the only way to properly register a complaint.
Transit Jam headlines
MURKY BUS NETWORK: CITYBUS’ H2 BUS SUPPLIER FOUND REBADGING SEC-INVESTIGATED FIRM’S BUSES
COPS TARGET DRIVERS ABUSING ZEBRA CROSSINGS: 207 FILMED FOR PROSECUTION
GRIEVING FAMILY OF KILLED CYCLIST WIN RIGHT TO RETRIEVE BODY IN TIME FOR LAST RITES
CITYBUS E-BUS SUPPLIER WISDOM SHARES OFFICE AND EMAIL ADDRESS WITH CITYBUS OWNER
Hong Kong road safety
Weekly crash stats: Monday 31 Oct to Sunday 6 Nov, 2022
Traffic crashes: 595
Traffic crashes with injury: 147
Weekly average crashes with injury: 277 (2022 to end Oct)
Dashcam of the Week
DRIFTING! I went to West Kowloon this week fully intending to lament the loss of the lawns and try to get a peek under the hood of the hydrogen bus at the IMX Motor Show. But the siren call of the drifting worked its magic and before too long I was hurtling around the concrete3 at what felt like Maverick Gs with the unbeatable stench of burning oil and burning rubber... fun fun fun!
The boss at Automobile Magazine said it was "very dramatic" to see a sustainable transport guy becoming a petrolhead, but I don't see a contradiction. Motorsport is wonderful, just keep it off the roads — see also, for example, idiots racing on the exact spot where a biker died only a few months ago:
And because it was the Geminid meteor shower last night (but too cloudy to see anything from most of the city), here's a meteor from earlier in the week. Hubble got nothing on Hong Kong dashcam astronomy!
the biggest policy shift here in centuries
unlike this newsletter, where discursive footnotes only enhance and elevate your reading pleasure, Transport Bureau footnotes are a graveyard of "we need to mention this but we want to put it in a small font".
former lawn, insert lament