Letters | East Lantau housing plans must not forget vital first steps: putting transport links in place

The lessons from the delays and huge cost overruns on the high-speed rail, resulting from undue haste to push ahead, appear to have been forgotten already

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Looking across at Peng Chau island and its surroundings from Lantau’s Nim Shue Wan village. That is area where the proposed East Lantau Metropolis will be built. Photo: Reuters

Published: 1:00pm, 17 Apr 2019Updated: 1:00pm, 17 Apr 2019

Lun Yiu Tung’s letter, “Let Tuen Mun overload be golf flats warning” (March 27), is a reminder that good infrastructure is needed for new housing estates.

The Task Force on Land Supply explained to the Citizen’s Task Force in a meeting in April last year that the timescale for their work did not allow for full consideration of the necessary infrastructure to support the land which they would be proposing for housing. This was a subsequent task for government.

The government’s speed in accepting the recommendations of the Task Force suggests that they had not considered the necessary supporting infrastructure, particularly the transport infrastructure, before their acceptance of the recommendations.

They already had a traffic and transport assessment report, based on preliminary data, which had reported that the proposed highway infrastructure from the northwest New Territories (Tuen Mun) to Hong Kong Island (Kennedy Town) via the East Lantau Metropolis did not have sufficient capacity for the full proposed development.

It recommended considering increasing the highway capacity, noting that this was not possible for the Hong Kong Island connection, reducing the East Lantau Metropolis development, additional highway links to the existing developed areas, and high tolls to discourage traffic. The full report has still not been released for public viewing, citing “confidentiality”.