Lawmaker calls for Hong Kong and mainland authorities to reduce jams on border bridge
- Some residents returning home using Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge at end of long weekend stuck for hours as traffic backed up
Hong Kong authorities should work with their mainland Chinese counterparts to reduce severe traffic jams on the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, according to a lawmaker who was stuck for four hours at the border crossing during the long weekend.
Transport sector lawmaker Gary Zhang Xinyu on Wednesday urged Hong Kong authorities to work with the Macau and mainland governments to ramp up immigration clearance capacities at the border to improve traffic flow and avoid the bottleneck travellers were caught in over the Dragon Boat Festival weekend.
According to figures from the Immigration Department, 83,851 people – including nearly 74,000 Hong Kong residents – entered the city via the mega bridge on Monday, the last day of the long weekend.
Travellers made a total of 345,539 trips across the bridge from Saturday to Monday, its highest usage during the Dragon Boat Festival holiday period since it opened in 2018.
Zhang said he was stuck in a jam for four hours at the Zhuhai border on Monday evening, a peak period when many Hongkongers returned to the city after spending the long weekend on the mainland.
“The cross-border bridge involves the operation of three governments, so they should have a robust communication mechanism. Hong Kong authorities should make a government-to-government contact with the mainland authorities to solve the issue,” he told a radio show.
