The Transport Department has co-ordinated with the Kowloon Motor Bus (KMB) Company to operate two special departures from Queen's Hill to schools in Fanling South and Sheung Shui South during the morning peak hours with effect from September 5.

The move aims to further enhance the public transport services in Queen's Hill and cater for students' transportation demand, the department said today.

It stressed that it has been keeping close contact with public transport operators on co-ordinating service arrangements given its concern about the transportation needs of Queen's Hill residents.

Regarding the first school day on September 1, the department deployed staff on site to monitor the situation.

More passengers were observed during the busiest period in the morning peak hours at around 7am to 8am. But passengers of KMB route 78A were able to get on the bus within five minutes on average and those of green minibuses (GMB) were also able to board within 10 minutes in general.

As the journeys of some GMBs were affected by busy traffic and illegal parking along Lung Sum Avenue, Lung Ma Road and Ma Sik Road, some minibuses were not able to return to the Queen's Hill GMB terminus as scheduled, resulting in a longer waiting time between 7.30am and 8am for passengers.

To smoothen the public transport services in Queen's Hill, the department reviewed the service arrangements with the KMB and GMB operator yesterday and implemented improvement measures today.

The measures included the deployment of mobile Octopus processors and arranging two buses to pick up passengers simultaneously by the KMB to shorten the passengers boarding time.

In addition, Police stepped up enforcement against illegal parking in the region, which alleviated the impact on GMB journeys.

The department explained that it deployed staff to monitor the transport services in Queen's Hill today. As such, the staff observed that the queueing and boarding for bus services were in order and the GMB operation was normal. Overall, passengers were able to board the minibuses within 10 minutes.

It added that it will continue to closely monitor the public transport demands in Queen's Hill to review and improve the public transport services as and when necessary to cater for the commuting needs of residents there.