It took massive discussions between Lammaites and the Govt. departments to change the original full Bike Park reclamation to a deck only.

Even more discussions will be needed if there's ever going to be any hope of just a boardwalk along the entire beachfront instead of the full 30-50m concrete reclamation as is still planned to start, originally this summer, postponed to next year, last thing I heard from insider sources.

Spiro writes:
"I was back in Yung Shue Wan today for the first time in a year. What a mess they are making of the harbourfront with all the reclamation. Sad to see the destruction of the lily pond valley too, and building site rubble in its place."

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Photo from today, by Malcolm Morris. He writes:

"Are they taking the piss?

8 x 9 x 3 cubic m @ 2.4 tonnes each = 504 tonnes of concrete

Platform only needs to hold 300 bikes @ 15 kg = 4.5 tonnes.

That is 100 times over spec already...."

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I am so glad that if I am going to park my bike at the pier it is going to be safe there at least until the end of the world. It will make my workday easier with one less worry.

Of course they are taking a piss. This testing is completely nonsense. Firstly, taking the size of the structure it so much over the head. Secondly, the piles, I am sure, end in rock, then this kind of testing is unnecessary. All here is designed to spend money.

The Bike Park construction works this morning, 1st photo below by Alice.

Two more of my 2 photos from a few weeks ago, one of the severalmassive crane ships we've seen along the ferry pier for much of this year so far. The construction cost has been rumoured (not confirmed) to have increased from $18 to $25 millions.

After several days of a nearly empty, dismantled building site, only the platform pillars left, the next phase has started, in bamboo scaffolding! What materials will they use next...

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Hard to resist suspicion that this foundation is for something much larger than parking place for bikes.

Well, it was originally planned as a ""VV Parking Lot", about 15 years ago, see the old plans posted in this forum.

If people refuse to park their bikes there, some other people might be illegally using it for parking VVs, trolleys, strollers and other "transport options"...

As it doesn't look like as they'll be enforcing the exclusive use of the bike park in the future (see other Outlying Islands with underused bike parks), the ferry pier will most likely remain full of parked bikes and trolleys for many years to come.

The 9 pillars seem done and load-tested with several hundred tons of concrete blocks now, time to build the platform with bamboo scaffolding.

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Next development project, sometime after completion of the Bike Park, on the notice board right now for the mandatory 14-day period, till Dec 18:

The tearing down and rebuilding of the Bike Park-adjacent YSW Library as a 3*1,000 sqft building.
It's even got a very catchy and pretty short name already:

"The Yung Shue Wan Library cum Heritage and Cultural Showroom"

This will obviously be a much larger, much more expensive and much more time-consuming project than the little bike platform they've been building most of this year. And despite the new name, it'll still be mostly a library on the upper two floors.

For more about the history and the "public consultation" of this project, click here.

What should be displayed to Lamma visitors inside the future Heritage and Cultural Showroom?
Any good (and bad) ideas?

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Latest update of the Bike Park at YSW Ferry Pier.
Massive steel girders are being installed on top of the 9 pillars drilled deep intro the coastline. The bridge to the Library (pending already budgeted rebuilding as a massive 3,000 sqft, $50 million structure) has been dismantled a while back. A a wide detour is needed now, see below, to reach the Library, the typhoon shelter, Fishermen Village and beyond to O Tsai Village.

In the meantime, the old, illegal platform opposite the post office, see below, is rotting away, disused, fenced in by barbed wire and starting to overgrow. It's been used as a construction materials storage before, but now that's all dumped illegally at the public gaido pier in the long-ago completed 1st phase of the YSW Harbour reclamation.

The platform is awaiting demolition when the full, up to 50m wide 2nd phase of the YSW harbour reclamation will start in the next few years...

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The deck of the platform is finally being cast right now (cement brand name "Green Island", a Li Ka-shing co.)

Another Lamma-record size boat along the YSW ferry pier. See photo today that I made from a video by Liz Gower:

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Lamma-zine story and links today, Fri, Feb 27, 2015.

Plus one more photo by David Chappell:
"A reminder of the extent of the bike parking problem on the pier in 1993"

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Comment from a friend:

"Our bike park is built to withstand a typhoon and a nuclear attack by killer zombies from Mars."

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To be fair, everything in Hong Kong has to be built to withstand a typhoon.

While the platform would certainly survive a nuclear attack, the bicycles though will be completely exposed to the, sun, rain, salt spray. But for $50,000 for each parking space, you can't expect much.

Almost done now, finally, bicycle stands delivered the other day.
A few more weeks.... or months...
Another notice mentions April 30, let's see...

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it's bricks galore. Whoever designed this platform has never seen a bike park in his life.

It's frankly hard to envisage how users will park their bikes without bumping into the wheels of the parked ones..... but who am I to comment....

actually it's quite clear that no professional designer, let alone user, was involved. Everything about it is wrong, from the brick paving (unnecessary) to the diameter of inverted-U tubular racks, to the spacing of those racks, not to mention the location.