Tunnel toll plan shelved

March 26, 2019

Chief Executive Carrie Lam:
It is part of our governance style that we would confront the problems and the issues that have been causing a lot of anxiety to Hong Kong people, and traffic congestion as a result of overuse of the Cross-Harbour Tunnel as well as the Eastern Harbour Crossing is a problem that we face for a while, while at the same time, the Western Harbour Crossing does have some spare capacity, especially after the opening of the Central-Wan Chai Bypass. So we have worked out this package of proposals and spent quite a lot of time to convince a commercial company, the Western Harbour Tunnel Company, to accept this package.
And I would say that this is really the first time on a substantive basis that we invite members of the Legislative Council to vote. So then comes a very realistic situation that we are doing extensive, intensive lobbying as Frank Chan has mentioned, over 30 occasions of discussing with the members of the Legislative Council, and we know very well from those discussions and from their comments to the media that we will not have enough votes and that is by quite a wide margin. So, in order not to waste the valuable time of the Legislative Council, we have decided to withdraw this motion from tomorrow’s agenda. I feel the whole process is a very conscientious process on the part of the Government to try to solve a problem, but at the same time, we respect the views of individual Legislative Council members and we will accept the consequence that this package is not going to be implemented, but we will then turn our efforts and attention to other measures to address the traffic congestion issue in Hong Kong.

The Government has decided to withdraw a motion on its toll adjustment plan for rationalising traffic among the three cross-harbour tunnels due to a lack of sufficient support from the Legislative Council.

The plan stipulated tolls payable by private cars, taxis and motorcycles using the Western Harbour Crossing would be lowered while those of the Cross-Harbour Tunnel and the Eastern Harbour Crossing would be increased.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam said today although the Government motion is a non-binding one, it involves follow-up work including an amendment to subsidiary legislation and applying for funding from LegCo’s Finance Committee for the implementation of the toll package.

“We have to be very certain that we have that sort of broad-based consensus and support before we move forward, otherwise we will be wasting a lot of people’s time and keeping this commercial company (operating Western Harbour Crossing ) in suspense of what is going to happen afterwards.”

It is the second time that a motion on the plan was withdrawn, following the first withdrawal in January.

Mrs Lam said the two withdrawals were made for different reasons.

“The first withdrawal was because of the Central-Wan Chai Bypass launching, which in the initial days had not been as smooth as we believed because it was only partial. So we do not want Legislative Council members to debate on a motion without the accurate and the comprehensive scenario in front of them, so they may come to some misunderstanding about the impact of the Central-Wan Chai Bypass on this particular package.

“So we withdrew that first motion and allowed a bit of time for the Central-Wan Chai Bypass to come into full commission.”

Mrs Lam said the Government has done extensive consultation and intensive lobbying in its bid to get support for the plan, but it learnt from discussions and lawmakers’ comments to the media that not enough votes would be secured.

“We respect the views of individual Legislative Council members and we will accept the consequence that this package is not going to be implemented, but we will then turn our efforts and attention to other measures to address the traffic congestion issue in Hong Kong.”