Scrap the tram line in Central and give way to Mercedes-Benzes
A local consulting company led by Mr Sit Kwok-keung, a former senior town planner, submitted a proposal to the Town Planning Board to scrap a major segment of the historical tram line that passes through the busiest Des Voeux Road Central. The retired town planner certainly knew what he was doing. The proposal got no chance of getting approved, but Mr Sit definitely succeeded in drumming up his company's name as an impudently innovative planning consultant. The main argument for the cancellation of the tram line segment is that trams are slow, outdated, and taking up one-third of our main roads. Besides, they serve no purpose but exist for nostalgic reasons only!
Yes, traffic is slow in Central and in many other segments of the tram line as well! Demolishing the tram line might help. But why Central? Trams are crawling through Chun Yeung Street Market while local residents are seriously engaging in their essential activities on the same street. The segment through Johnston Road is equally slow, with locals and tourists dashing over from all angles. There is no doubt that the roads would be less congested if there were fewer vehicles. Banning buses, vans or private cars will do just the same for improving the traffic flow. According to a recent study by Friends of the Earth and HKUST, for Des Voeux Road Central, more than 40% of the road is taken up by cars, about 20% by buses, and less than 5% by trams. Oh yes! We have enough Mercedes-Benzes that need to go to Central and can't tolerate the sluggish traffic, while trams are cheap means of public transport and are totally orthogonal to our more important and richer members of society.
After all, no one has taken the proposal seriously, while media and witty netizens grabbed the opportunity to jeer at the mentality behind attempting to destroy our iconic tram line or any segment of it. The government, having learned from the lesson of removing the old Star Ferry pier, should be uninterested in starting another war with the nativists. But who knows, these days, the government has a track record of behaving beyond comprehension by any normal individual.
August 2015
"Consultant"! How did you get that conclusion?
Let's do a simple calculation and see what it will lead to. Suppose a tram on the average carries 70 passengers, and a private car takes 2 (chauffeur and his boss). Then, the ratio of the carried traffic per tram to that per car is 35 to 1. Moreover, according to the Friends of the Earth's report, trams and cars account for <5% and >40%, respectively, of the road use in Des Voeux Road Central. These percentages describe the traffic flow rate, i.e., number of vehicles going through a segment of the road per unit time. Thus, the road sharing ratio of trams and cars is 1 to 8 or more. Clearly, trams are still far more efficient in terms of carried traffic per unit shared road. Specifically, trams are carrying 35/8 (i.e., 4.375) times more commuters per unit shared road per unit time than cars are through the busy Des Voeux Road Central.
PS: If you don't like the above conclusion, formulate your own analysis, fit some real data in, walk through your own logic, and finally draw your own desired conclusion. Anyway, any good consultancy report would derive a method of analysis, present results and draw conclusions that support or reject a particular proposal! Sorry to say that Mr Sit's failed to pass the standard of a reasonable consultancy report.