The Office of Yu Lai Fan, District Councillor
Transport Department with Residents Meeting
Concerning the Re-tender of the Outlying Island Ferry Routes
The Transport Department announced that it had reviewed the bids for six outlying island ferry routes but four of which have to be re-tendered because the proposed fares in bids received were too high. The fare proposed in the bids for Central-Lamma services represented an increase of more than 35% .Holding the view that most local residents would likely reject such fare, the Transport Department planned to re-tender the four outlying island ferry routes in the first week on march and results are expected to be ready by the end of April.
Date: 6 March 2008 (Thurday)
Time: 8:00pm
Venue: YUNG SHUE WAN PLAYGROUND
All residents are welcome.
Your opinion is very much appreciated.

If you are not available for the above meeting, please do not hesitate to send us your opinion by fax (29821443) or by email (yulaifan@netvigator.com)

It's wonderful to see that the powers that be are listening and creating a better opportunity for citizen involvement in matters that impact the community so deeply!

_________________
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
----- Margaret Mead

.....only after 3 weeks of doing nothing and people trampled into her office.....

If YLF had been doing her job, she should have been working on this 6 months ago.

I was at the meeting, along with a hundred or more locals.

The TD explained their case: There is a firm policy that transport should not be subsidised in its running expenses. However, obviously the government does subsidise most forms of transport in HK. But this is carefully categorised as "capital investment". So untold billions of dollars are used to build road and rail infrastructure and rolling stock, but this is not a "subsidy" under this definition.

As for ferries, though NO FIGURES WERE SUPPLIED (!), the TD said they had reduced all the govt fees and costs, as well as the pier charges.

One of the more absurd and infuriating facts revealed was that development of the Central piers, which could have earned a LOT of money to subsidise (oops, "offset") costs (cf the shops in the Disco Bay and star Ferry piers) has been frozen for ten years or so while a dispute with HYF ground its way through the court.

Only a true bureaucrat could have sat on their hands for a decade and wasted prime Central real estate.

The "good" news is that this is settled and so development can begin. Of course, the bad news is that this will take a couple of years before it's ready -- in other words, no help in this crisis.

Anyway, the rules of the game are that the government will front money for just about anything <B>except running expenses</b>. Asking for a "subsidy" for each ticket is not going to get us anywhere (reasonable though it seems to us when we consider the support given to other public transport).

I have to wonder about using the upper floor of the Lamma pier -- how hard would it be to make that into a restaurant -- the views would be incredible. (Though views rarely seem to rate in Chinese restaurants.)

Anyway, aside from this a lot of complaints and demand were made during the meeting. I expect the TD to ignore everything we've said, having "taken note" of our suggestions, filing them away, and forgetting them. But I hope they did get the message that cutting the service severely, as they cheerfully planned to do, will cause them a lot of flak.

I still cannot for the life of me understand why the TD representative felt that govt. investment in new technology ferries, which would be more fuel efficient and less polluting, would amount to a subsidy of daily operating costs. I don't think there's any difference between such an investment and the subsidies provided to upgrading buses and taxis to LPG. Surely the ferries themselves can be considered infrastructure hardware as much as can train tracks, bridges, etc.? After all, the suggestion had been that operators lease the ferries back from the govt. so the cost of the use of the equipment (ferry) would be included in the costing equation of the price of fares.

When challenged about the govt. support for reduction in emissions from taxis and buses through their support of LPG conversions as a parallel precedent for them supporting ferry upgrades, she simply replied that the current ferries comply with the present environmental regulations of the marine dept. Well conventional taxis and buses obviously are not contravening environmental regulations so her defense does not follow.

_________________
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
----- Margaret Mead