Duelling the Hiram’s highroad

^{The New Hiram’s Highway just moved the traffic jams closer to Sai Kung}

Driving in the New Territories on weekdays in the early 1970s was a pleasure, disturbed only by huge second-hand Japanese trucks building the new towns. Roads were narrow and tree lined, those branching off to villages, just two concrete strips with grass in between. To get from Sai Sha to Shatin needed an off-road vehicle if you did not want to go back through Kowloon.

With the opening up of the NT however the inevitable infrastructure projects came on line, the second Lion Rock Tunnel, the Tuen Mun Highway, the double tracking of the KCRC, to name but a few that destroyed the small villages and cut through the vegetable patches. It all seemed so advanced, so modern, that people laughed at the suggestion that the Cross Harbour Tunnel should have 3 lanes each way not just two. 

Nobody seemed aware of how quickly the infrastructure would need to change, least of all the planners. Rather than looking 15 years ahead when the old Tsim Sha Tsui Station was demolished and moved to Hung Hom, and having the buildings of East TST built over a blind tunnel, they moved the station, seemingly unaware that they would need to build a new pedestrian tunnel linking the stations under the completed buildings a few years later.

But slowly it dawned on the public, as they negotiated the widening of the Tuen Mun Highway or the new expressway under construction on the old Yuen Long Tuen Mun dual carriageway, that the planners were building for the opening day rather than some years in the future, so even the widest roads or tunnels were fully utilised soon after completion.

Now, apparently having not learnt from their previous history, Highways Department is intent on finishing the dualling of Hirams Highway, oblivious to the current trend for legal parking spaces, cycle tracks or no right turns off and across two lane fast roads.

It looks as if will we have to wait for more cows to die, cyclists get knocked off or pedestrians bowled over before Sai Kung gets a modern, functional and uncongested road that will separate pedestrians, cyclists and cows and at least allow easy entry into the Temple carpark or other proper carparks without causing a tailback. It certainly appears currently that all the upheaval of the Stage 2 dualling will not produce a road and travel environment that befits the Garden of Hong Kong in 2040. Or is it the planners intention to produce a faster road to the weekend bottleneck.        

Covid policy with its emphasis on out-doors, exercise and distancing should surely be the wake-up call to the planners to review their long-term plans and make Sai Kung the recreational and nature centre of Hong Kong where humans can be separated from cars and concrete for a short rejuvenating time. However, suggestions other than the perennial “wider faster roads” such as tunnels from Pak Kong to north Kap Pin Long or termination at a roundabout with sufficient parking, Star Plaza perhaps, have received no recorded consideration. So it would seem Sai Kung is destined for “more of the same” an immediate solution that fails to take account of the needs of anyone other than the car user.      

Dick Turpin