Hong Kong Postcard
April 21, 2014
Your intrepid national councilor undertook a three day immersion into Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Art Fair, at the end of May. My preconceptions were a gridlocked run in from the airport, heightened by our late departure from Sydney. The opening evening of the art fair was closing at 9.00pm, which was doable with scheduled 5.45 landing. Our arrival at 6.50 was a concern, however a very speedy immigration process then a taxi ride that was as it said, a 30 minute ride direct to our hotel. We were at the Fair by 8.00pm. Very efficient traffic network – try that in a city on our eastern seaboard? Not much fun.
The next morning we decided on a Star Ferry ride to Kowloon, then a long walk around. A short walk from our hotel to the ferry was a bit frustrating, walking at street level as we were. What an inhospitable place for pedestrians, how do they put up with it, we thought. Must be a lot of pedestrian road casualties. As we waited at lights for very short crossing cycles, and were forced to take circuitous routes to cross larger intersections. We worked it out as we approached the ferry wharf, when a cavalcade of pedestrians arrived from the upper level of a large building. The pedestrian space in the new parts of the city is one level up from the street – through the mezzanine levels of building and across a network of overpasses to link to all locations. Another discovery on the underground metro – there are pedestrian underground routes that subvert the road system. Metro stations have exits numbered up to J10, that is potentially 100 exits!
So a tick to the road network, ferry system, metro, and to the mezzanine pedestrian movement. In fact all forms of transport work well in Hong Kong – Road, rail metro, ferry, and bus, as well as escalators for pedestrians to reach the ‘mid-levels’, home of the British expat community for much of last century. I am told that in the fifties and sixties that district looked just like London, even down to the black gloss doors to the houses.
