LAI YING-KIT YINGKIT.LAI@SCMP.COM
PUBLISHED : Monday, 26 October, 2015, 11:58am
UPDATED : Monday, 26 October, 2015, 1:04pm
Traffic was halted for about two hours on the Lantau Link’s Kap Shui Mun Bridge on Friday. Photo: Jonathan Wong
The Hong Kong government will review emergency plans for closure of the Lantau link in the wake of last Friday’s traffic chaos, transport secretary Anthony Cheung Bing-leung said on Monday.
On Friday, a barge crashed into the Lantau Link’s Kap Shui Mun Bridge, effectively cutting off Hong Kong International Airport on the island. Traffic was halted for about two hours.
Cheung did not comment on whether the govenrment had been slow in telling commuters about the crash. But he acknowledged that commuters would feel more secure if they were told about what was happening. He added the review would also look at the way the government releases information to the public in case similar incidents happened in future.
"I think the same applies in any traffic incidents. First, information should be disseminated quickly to let affected people know what is happening and how serious it is," he said.
Cheung said the Transport Department had a contingency plan in place since the airport was opened at Chek Lap Kok in 1998.
This involves arranging for ships to carry commuters from Tsuen Wan West to Tung Chung in case an emergency shut down the link to Lantau, Cheung said.
“When the bridges and roads to Lantau are impossible, the only alternative is by sea,” he said. “The Transport Department will contact a contractor and ask it to arrange ships.”
In the case of Friday’s closure, Cheung said the department implemented this plan. He said the contractor notified the department at around 9.10pm, about one hour after the bridge was closed, that its ships would be ready to take commuters around 10pm.
READ MORE: Calls for alternative to Lantau Link to Hong Kong airport after transport chaos
Cheung said that by 10pm, the bridge’s operator finished a check and reopened Kap Shui Mun Bridge.
He said the government’s review would look at possible inadequacies in the implementation of the existing plan. “This includes the process of activating sea transport, and information dissemination,” he said.
Michael Tien Puk-sun, chairman of the Legislative Council’s transport panel, questioned if the contingency plan was widely known among Hong Kong’s public. He also said there had to be vehicles to take commuters arriving at Tung Chung to their final destinations. “Otherwise they will still be stuck in Tung Chung,” he said.
Tien also said the Marine Department was to blame for Friday’s crash. He said the department had been lax in its patrols.
“If you have a bridge so low that it can be hit by a barge, the first thing is to deploy patrol vessels to the waters to monitor,” Tien said. “If anything happens, it can order ships to stop,” he said during a Commercial Radio talk show.
Dr Hung Wing-tat, associate professor from the Polytechnic University’s department of civil and environmental engineering, said the government should have communicated better with the public once the bridge was closed.
“There should be better coordination, especially for passengers who travelled to the airport and needed time to plan their route,” he said.
He said the government should have clearly stated all possible routes leading to the airport once the only land route was closed.
Before an alternative route between Tuen Mun and Chek Lap Kok was ready in 2018, Hung suggested the government could increase the frequency of ferries or deploy bigger boats to transport passengers to and from the airport in the event of a similar road closure.
“In the contingency plan, there should be direct routes from Hong Kong Island or Kowloon to the airport,” he said, adding all journeys should be completed within an hour.
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/economy/article/1872123/lantau-link-chaos-hong-kong-government-review-emergency-plans
