Early Completion as One of Conitions for Tendering of Shatin-Central Rail Line

Yesterday, the legislative council passed the motion on the Railway Development Strategy introduced by Lau Chin Sek, the chairman of the Federation of Workers and the one amended by Lau Kwon Wah, representing the Betterment of the Democratic Alliance and Tang Shiu Tong, the Hong Kong Progessive Alliance. They requested that the government should quickly carry out the recommedations in the Railway Development Strategy announced in May and expected that the construction of the two rail lines, Shatin-Central one and West Island one, would complete before 2008. Besides, they call for the government to fix the time schedule of other rail lines, design a comprehensive public consultation on the location of rail lines, review the mechanism of and the ordinances on the balance of environmental and social development needs, and establish a fair compensation mechanism for the afflicted land owners.

Ng Wing Wai, Secretary of Transport, has presented the progess of all rail construction projects in the meeting. He said that the completion date of the Shatin-Central line construction would be more late then the legislative councilors expected because the line construction is under the adverse influences of the delayed development of South East Kowloon and the late completion of the Central/Wan Chai Reclamation. So the railway line construction could not complete before 2008. He promised that if possible, we would speed up the construction of the Shatin-Central rail line for a faster completion.

Concerning the time schedules on the construction of West Island line, Regional Express and Port Railway, Ng Wing Wai failed to show their implemenation dates. He explained that the uncertainty of the Western District Devleopment Strategy and the Urban Renewal Scheme fails to allow the government from deciding its construction date; for the Regional Express, the government need to further review the recommedation suggested by the consultant before making decision on a starting date of its construction; Similarly, before launching the construction of the Port Railway, the government have to consider the growth of rail freight and the KCRC's scheme on the establishment of a distribution centre in Pin Wu. However Ng Wing Wai emphaized that citizen should not worried too much about the completion time of those project as the government felt confident of finishing them.

To respond to the question of legislative councilors on the balance of the environmental protection and railway planning, Ng Wing Wai said that a majority of new railway lines are built beneath the ground to alleviate its adverse on the environment; also in compliance with the Environmental Impact Assessment ordinance, the government would request railway companies to evalulate environmental impacts of the railway construction at the eariler stage such that the suitable lines are chosen to meet the requirment of the environmental protection; if necessary, the government also considered to strengthen the intergovernmental mechanism in achieving its balance.

In terms of land resumption, he said that if the compensation mechanism under urban renewal scheme was passed, it would be applied to the rail construction cases as well.

A majority of legislaive councilors requested the government to speed up the construction of the rail line between Shatin and Central; they hoped that future environmental impact assessment studies were not rejected as the one of Lok Ma Chow spur line and of South-North Lautau passage.

Lau Chin Shek strongly claimed that during the public tendering, the government should seriously assess whether or not KCRC could finish the construction of the Shatin-Central line on schedule; for KCRC is inexperienced in building a large scale of railway network and also has several railway construction projects in hand such as West Rail, Ma On Shan rail, Lok Ma Chow spur line.

This article is translated from the original one in the Hong Kong Economic Journal