So! Only a few small creases to iron out before we are the proud owners of another shiny white, soon to be grey-with-pollution elephant: The bridge from a small, quiet village on Lantau (which apparently doesn’t yet have the required density of trucks worthy of a village in a world-class city,) to Zhuhai.
I’ve been to Zhuhai, and the first thought that strikes the casual visitor to that affluent, bicycle-less city is: Here is a place exhibiting an astonishing lack of urgency to acquire more air-borne particles.
Some bleeding-heart, tree hugging liberals might say the same about Lantau, but in this as in so many other things our government stands firm: Lantau has been lagging behind in the air-borne particles-stakes for too long.
The dull-brown pall hanging over young family paradise Tung Chung aside, the island just doesn’t have enough trucks spewing out emissions from illegal diesel bought in places like, yes, Zhuhai.
So it’s HK government to the rescue.
Now all Lantau dwellers will be able to enjoy the kind of air, noise and traffic density that is the birthright of everyone else in Hong Kong. Hooray.
Although the project still hasn’t been put out to tender and although the government isn’t confident that any one company will take it on (what, Cheung Kong Holdings turning down an opportunity to create jobs for the boys entirely paid for by the HK tax payer?) – when the environmental assessment is all in the box, (no prizes for guessing the result there) the job can go ahead.
So it will cost some $1,300 for a truck driver to pay the bridge toll one way, according to the figures our economists have tentatively put out. So what? As one can see from the Western Tunnel, the more it costs to drive through it, the more people will clamour to do so and the more we will have solved our traffic problems.
But if, like Disneyland, this new white elephant should be a case of “Build it and they will stay away in droves,” at least we can count on our government to foot the bill.
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