Walkable City,Living Streets7 May 2013

Event Report

DRINKSWATER

Acknowledgements....................................................................................................................3

Executive Summary.....................................................................................................................4

Opening and Keynote Speeches.................................................................................................7

Session 1: Pedestrian Network Planning...................................................................................14• Effective Pedestrian Planning – Lessons Learnt• A Multi-Layered City – How Do We Make It Work? • Universally Accessible Pedestrian Environment • Chair Response• Question & Answer Session

Session 2: Pedestrian Safety.....................................................................................................44• Safer and Attractive Streets in Hong Kong – the Future Rests on Lower Speed Limits• The Walkable Urban Environment and Pedestrian Exposure• Easing the Way – Improving Pedestrian Movement on Urban Streets• Chair Response• Question & Answer Session

Lunch-Time Forum..................................................................................................................68

Session 3: Streets as Public Space ...........................................................................................69• Making Walkable Places in Kowloon East• Revitalising Public Spaces: The Tai Yuen Experience• Let’s Reclaim Our Streets!• Chair Response• Question & Answer Session

Panel Discussion ......................................................................................................................98• Question & Answer Session

Thanks and Closing.................................................................................................................118

Appendices ............................................................................................................................120• Programme• Speakers’ & Panelists’ Biographies

Table of Contents

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Civic Exchange would like to thank the following people and organisations:

• Community for Road Safety and Designing Hong Kong for co-organising this event;

• Development Bureau Energizing Kowloon East Office, MTR Corporation and New World Development for funding this event, and especially Development Bureau Energizing Kowloon East Office for sponsoring the venue;

• American Institute of Architects Hong Kong, Asian Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, The Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation Hong Kong Branch, The Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport in Hong Kong, The Hong Kong Institute of Landscape Architects, The Hong Kong Institute of Planners, Hong Kong Institution of Urban Design, Hong Kong Public Space Initiatives, Institute of Advanced Motorists Hong Kong and 30SGroup for supporting this event;

• Mr. Chi-Sing Wai, Prof. Anthony Bing-leung Cheung, Mr. Sam Chow, Mr. Paul Zimmerman, Mr. Joseph Kwan, Mr. Julian Kwong, Dr. Zhi Ning, Mr. Neil Adams, Dr. Wing-tat Hung, Mr. Vincent Wong, Mr. Raymond Lee, Dr. Calvin Kwan, Mr. Gavin Coates, Mr. Fred Brown, Ms. Gigi Lau, Ms. Ada Ying-Kay Wong and Ms. Xiaomei Duan for their presentations, contributions to the panel discussions and commentaries;

• Mr. Oren Tatcher, Mr. Cameron MacDonald and Prof. Melissa Cate Christ for chairing the sessions;

• Yan-yan Yip for delivering the closing note;

• Simon Ng, Paul Zimmerman, Julian Kwong, Michelle Wong, Rae Leung, Debby Chan, Denis Leung and Cissy Lui for event planning and coordination;

• Christopher Yuen and Development Bureau Energizing Kowloon East Office for taking event photos;

• Rae Leung for designing this event summary;

• Cissy Lui and Sonya Chen for preparing the event report and

• Bryan Suen, Katie Ng, Martin Lai, Iris Chan, Wilson Lau, Carine Lai, Hoyt Lui, Ryan Li, Kenneth Wong, Lilian Ngan, Micah Woo, Clifford Chang for their help on the day.

Event presentations, videos, speaker biographies and programme are available on the event website at: http://www.civic-exchange.org/wp/walkability_en/

Civic Exchange is a nonprofit public policy think tank that helps improve policy and decision-making through research and analysis.

This summary is based on transcripts recorded at the conference held on 7 May 2013, and the opinions expressed in this report do not necessarily represent those of Civic Exchange. Please refer to the event videos for the full comments.

Acknowledgements

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In support of the Second United Nations Global Road Safety Week focused on ‘pedestrian safety’, Civic Exchange, Community for Road Safety and Designing Hong Kong co-hosted a full-day event entitled Walkable City, Living Streets on three themes, ‘Pedestrian Network Planning’, ‘Pedestrian Safety’ and ‘Streets as Public Space’. Around 170 people attended this Conference to discuss these matters and to hear speeches and presentations from:

Mr. Chi-Sing Wai, JP, Permanent Secretary for Development (Works), HKSAR Government. As venue sponsor of the event, Mr. Wai welcomed all participants and highlighted the Government’s vision is to create walkable pedestrian environment and improve traffic;

Prof. Anthony Bing-leung Cheung, GBS, JP, Secretary for Transport and Housing, HKSAR Government. Prof. Cheung shared Government’s ongoing efforts and future plans in providing pedestrian-friendly environment in certain areas such as Kai Tak, Kwu Tung North, Yuen Long Town, and Soho District in Central;

Mr. Sam Chow, Director at ARUP, described various case studies on pedestrian planning, including MTR Admiralty interchange station, shopping mall in Shanghai, racecourse in Hong Kong, Tsim Sha Tsui area, as well as research on pedestrian behaviours of different Chinese cities;

Mr. Paul Zimmerman, CEO of Designing Hong Kong, started with the history of transport policies in Hong Kong, then illustrated the walkability of various districts in Hong Kong through mapping tools, as well as examples of obstacles and the lack of facilities at street level;

Mr. Joseph Kwan, Founding Director of UDA Consultants Ltd, focused on the universal accessibility of city design by discussing the international and local rules, bad examples and good practices

Executive Summary

Credit: EKEO

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worldwide;

Mr. Oren Tatcher, Principal of OTC Ltd, touched on the scale of different walking distances and that Hong Kong does not encourage long distance walking;

Mr. Julian Kwong, Founding Chair of Community for Road Safety, highlighted the benefits of introducing of lower speed limits zones in Hong Kong including reduction of pedestrian casualties and fatalities;

Dr. Zhi Ning, Assistant Professor of the School of Energy and Environment at City University of Hong Kong, described the health impacts of roadside air pollution, the causes and policy recommendations to reduce it by phasing out old buses and trucks, and setting up of Low Emission Zones;

Mr. Neil Adams, formerly Chief Engineer Network Operations at Transport for London (TfL), showed examples of his works in London that improved pedestrian condition, such as Oxford Circus, Piccadilly by squaring the circle, traffic signal cycle and pedestrian countdown;

Mr. Cameron MacDonald, Associate Director of Atkins China Ltd. shared some global guidelines and practices on road safety, relevant risk factors and safe walking framework;

Mr. Raymond Lee, Head of Energizing Kowloon East Office (EKEO), Development Bureau of HKSAR Government. Mr. Lee introduced the vision of EKEO, which was to transform the Kowloon East area into another core business district of Hong Kong. He shared the progress made so far and challenges they faced in Kowloon East, as well as quick win strategies and temporary events to test potential future uses;

Dr. Calvin Kwan, Senior Manager (Sustainability) of The Link Management Ltd, showcased the revitalisation of Tai Yuen wet market based on the company’s sustainability initiatives. The change facilitated sales, job opportunities and accessibility, and it is a valuable example on how private sector engaged in public spaces;

Mr. Gavin Coates, a Landscape Architect, illustrated with examples the vehicle-oriented planning street design in Hong Kong, and the possibilities to reclaim the streets for pedestrians make our streets more attractive to pedestrians by various creative ways including tree-planting and footpath expansion; and

Prof. Melissa Cate Christ, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Hong Kong, touched on different streets and stairs in Hong Kong, and the ways people use them contribute to the complexity of pedestrian network.

The event ended off with a panel discussion enhanced with comments from:

Mr. Fred Brown, MVA, showed what we are going to achieve and what we already committed, also hurdles and lack of cooperation between private and public sectors;

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Ms. Gigi Lau, 30SGroup, highlighted the challenges pedestrians faced in a multilayered city as well as some good practices and how people try to make places work and attractive;

Ms. Ada Ying-Kay Wong, JP, Hong Kong Institute of Contemporary Culture, shared her experience at district level; and

Ms. Xiaomei Duan, Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, provided development examples in Guangzhou.

Throughout the event, expert commentators and participants raised a range of issues including:

• Planning of level change in multilayered pedestrian network;

• Increase in cycling facilities;

• Change of traffic signal cycles to match pedestrian behaviour;

• Top-level commitment from Government is essential;

• Adoption of low speed zones to calm traffic;

• Traffic noise disturbs residential area;

• Definition of public space;

• Right proportion of trees, footpaths, seating facilities should be considered;

• Public engagement and participation should be encouraged to come up with a vision for the city; and

• Better collaboration between public and private sectors.

Please see the event programme and speaker biographies in the appendices.

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Opening RemarksMr. Simon Ng Civic Exchange

Prof. Anthony Cheung, Mr. Wai Chi-sing, distinguished guests, speakers and panelists, ladies and gentlemen, good morning.

On behalf of the three co-organisers, including Civic Exchange, Community for Road Safety, and Designing Hong Kong, I want to thank you for coming to this Walkable City, Living Streets conference. The main objective of this conference is to promote and improve walkability in Hong Kong. To encourage people to walk more and for longer distance, we also want to promote pedestrian safety. In this respect, this conference is organised to support the Second United Nations Global Road Safety Week this week, which is dedicated to pedestrian safety.

When I look across this room, packed with people and filled with passion, it gives me enormous pride and pleasure that a lot of people actually care about our city and our pedestrians. After all, we are pedestrians every day and walking has become part of our daily life. Yet, we tend to neglect its importance, and expect the walking environment to take care of itself without careful planning.

Today, we want to emphasise the need to plan our city for people. We will explore ways to plan for better pedestrian networks, to protect people from traffic accidents and poor air quality, and to make streets an attractive place to visit. I am not sure whether this is the first conference in Hong Kong that is dedicated to pedestrians and their needs. However, I am certain that, with all your support, this is not going to be the last.

I want to take this opportunity to thank those who share Civic Exchange’s passion for better pedestrian planning in Hong Kong, including Julian Kwong of Community for Road Safety and Paul Zimmerman of Designing Hong Kong. I want to thank Solution on Wheels to co-host our lunch-time forum. I want to thank the ten supporting organisations and I am going to read out their names because I really appreciate their support:

• American Institute of Architects Hong Kong

• Asian Society for Traumatic Stress Studies

• The Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation Hong Kong Branch

• The Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport in Hong Kong

• The Hong Kong Institute of Landscape Architects

Opening and Keynote Speeches

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Good morning Prof. Anthony Cheung (the Secretary for Transport and Housing), Mr. Simon Ng (Head of Transport and Sustainability Research, Civic Exchange), Mr. Julian Kwong (Chairman of Community for Road Safety), Mr. Paul Zimmerman (CEO of Designing Hong Kong), Ladies and Gentlemen!

• The Hong Kong Institute of Planners

• Hong Kong Institution of Urban Design

• Hong Kong Public Space Initiatives

• Institute of Advanced Motorists Hong Kong

• 30SGroup

I also want to express my gratitude to MTR Corporation and New World Development Company Limited, not only for their sponsorship but also for the great work they have been doing to improve walkability in Hong Kong.

Last but not least, I want to thank Energizing Kowloon East Office of the Development Bureau for being our partner. They provide sponsorship to this event, and also allow us to host it in this wonderful venue. As we are on their home soil, I find it extremely fitting to invite Mr. Wai Chi-sing, Permanent Secretary for Development of the HKSAR Government, to deliver his welcome remarks. Please welcome Mr. Wai.

Welcome RemarksMr. Chi-Sing Wai, JP Permanent Secretary for Development (Works), HKSAR Government

Credit: EKEO

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First of all, it gives me great pleasure to be invited by the organisers, Civic Exchange, Community for Road Safety and Designing Hong Kong, to give a welcoming speech for today’s conference. On behalf of the Development Bureau, may I extend a warm welcome to all of you to our Energizing Kowloon East Office (EKEO). I’m glad that the organisers find this place made out of recycled containers under a flyover in Kwun Tong a good venue for this event.

EKEO was established in June last year to facilitate the transformation of Kowloon East into a core business district to support Hong Kong’s long-term economic growth. In the past 11 months, we have been ‘place-making’ this area so that the community would like to work, to do business, to walk, to stay and to play here. One of our main strategies is to enhance ‘Connectivity’. This is indeed the first ‘C’ of our ‘CBDD’ (or CBD2), which is ‘Connectivity’, ‘Branding’, ‘Design’ and ‘Diversity’. We aim at creating a pedestrian environment here which is “walkable”, “stayable” and “sittable” and at the same time improving the traffic situation within Kowloon East. This is a humble aim, but yet we are facing a lot of challenges as you can imagine in this high density area which is not designed as a business district at the start, and today with a working population of some 220,000. In February this year, we have commissioned a study to improve the pedestrian and traffic environment in Kowloon Bay Business Area. We are also working with the Design School of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University on a research project on connectivity and mobility. We are looking forward to some innovative solutions and we will share our findings with you later.

I would like to take this chance to thank many Bureaux and Departments which have been fully supporting the work of EKEO all along, in particular our close working partners – Transport and Housing Bureau, Transport Department and Highways Department. They have worked with us hand in hand over the past months to implement many local improvement works which bring immediate improvements on walkability and better road traffic condition. With their dedicated efforts, 41 local road junctions including traffic signs, pedestrian crossing and traffic signals etc. will be improved and some of the works have already been completed. The streetscape and greening works will also be further enhanced. In the time to come, we will continue to improve the pedestrian environment including development of pedestrian links and other necessary traffic improvement measures to create a walkable, green and low-carbon CBD. The title of today’s conference – “Walkable City, Living Streets”– is no doubt a perfect fit of our vision.

Hong Kong, a heavily built-up metropolitan city, is well known for its very efficient rail-base and road-base transport system. In Hong Kong, I am not sure whether we should promote cycling in the urban areas, but walkability and vibrancy of our streets are essential to the success of our CBDs. How to make this area more walkable? What shall be done to make our streets ‘live’? I am sure this conference will provide a good platform for professionals, academia and all of you to exchange views and explore ways that are practical and applicable here. EKEO welcomes such suggestions and would offer Kowloon East to be the experimental ground for trying out some of the innovative ideas.

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gentlemen,I am very delighted to be invited to this conference on Walkable City, Living Streets co-organised by the Civic Exchange, Community for Road Safety and Designing Hong Kong. The conference is timely as this new Administration seeks to promote a green transport environment which should include a pedestrian-friendly dimension. Our goal sounds simple, but we do not underestimate the challenges before us – resulting from Hong Kong's compact and congested city space and previous policy legacies. Here I would like to share with you some of my thoughts.

Although Hong Kong has a highly efficient and extensive public transport system which accounts for about 90 per cent of the vehicular trips, everyone walks to different extent each day. According to the territory-wide Travel Characteristics Survey that the Transport Department completed in 2012, about 30 per cent of Hong Kong residents made at least one walk-only trip on a normal weekday, and over 70 per cent of our commuters walked to access a

In the afternoon session, my colleague Raymond Lee, who is the Head of EKEO, will talk about how to make Kowloon East more walkable. I hope you will appreciate how we are working towards this objective. Today’s lunch-time forum will be held at our open space beneath the flyover just next to this office. This piece of land was opened to public as an informal cultural venue since January this year. I hope you will enjoy this public open space that we have created for the people of Hong Kong.

Finally, I wish the conference a great success! Thank you.

Keynote Presentation Prof. Anthony Bing-leung Cheung, GBS, JP Secretary for Transport and Housing, HKSAR Government

Mr. Wai (Chi-sing), Mr. (Simon) Ng, distinguished guests, ladies and

Credit: EKEO

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transport mode, and to reach their destinations after alighting from vehicles every day.

A walkable city can reduce the use of motorised transport, helping to benefit our air quality and, in turn, our quality of life. However, this does not mean doing away with public transport. On the contrary, if a densely populated city like Hong Kong is to function well as a walkable city, we must first of all provide an efficient mass transit system so as to free up road space. The entire city should be well served by easily accessible public transport with good intermodal connectivity, and pedestrians should be able to move around in a safe and comfortable environment. At the same time, the needs of the elderly and disabled must be well taken care of.

In other words, we are talking about a system of connectivity and mobility that can facilitate walking as a real and practical choice for most commuters.

Pedestrian Planning While Hong Kong can generally fit the bill in terms of public transport accessibility and reliability, we need to do much more to make it a truly walkable city. To this end, the Government has been putting more emphasis on planning for pedestrians, and has set comprehensive principles and standards on pedestrian planning and pedestrian facilities in the Hong Kong Planning Standards and Guidelines, which apply to planning studies, the preparation and revision of town plans, and development control.

Take for example the planning of the new Kai Tak Development and the proposed Kwu Tung North New Development Area: much consideration has been given to promoting a pedestrian-friendly environment through careful planning and provision of adequate pedestrian facilities. In the Kai Tak Development, there will be a total of 25 sets of new and enhanced pedestrian links, including subways, footbridges and footpaths, to bring the hinterland of Kai Tak closer together. In the Kwu Tung North New Development Area, walkways and footpaths which are continuous and landscaped will be provided to create a pleasant walking environment.

Universal Accessibility To promote walkability, we give first priority to the needy ones, especially the elderly and people with disabilities. Last August, the Administration announced a new policy on Universal Accessibility, whereby we will retrofit barrier-free access facilities such as lifts to existing public walkways, i.e. footbridges, elevated walkways and subways maintained by the Highways Department, so as to facilitate access by the public.

In parallel, we continue to pursue a pre-existing programme of about 170 projects for retrofitting of barrier-free access facilities to meet the requirements of the Equal Opportunities Commission.

Pedestrian Environment Improvement Schemes To minimise vehicle-pedestrian conflicts and improve roadside air quality, the Administration is taking forward various schemes to improve the pedestrian environment in business districts, shopping centres and leisure areas with heavy pedestrian flows.

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The Pedestrian Environment Improvement Scheme for the Yuen Long Town, presently undertaken by the Highways Department, is a good example. Some of the medium and minor improvement works have already been completed, involving widening of existing footpaths, straightening of pedestrian crossings and implementation of no-stopping restrictions on vehicles.

We have also proposed to construct a footbridge of around 520 metres long along Yuen Long Town Nullah, connecting West Rail Long Ping Station in the north to Ma Tin Road in the south to serve as a strategic north-south pedestrian route.

Hillside Escalator Links and Elevator Systems Many of you should have been to the Soho district by taking the hillside escalator in Central District. You may like to know the Administration is taking forward similar projects in other areas of Hong Kong. For instance, the Centre Street escalator system, which was proposed earlier, is under construction and will be in full operation by the third quarter of this year. The pedestrian link at Tsz Wan Shan has been included in the Shatin to Central Link project, for completion by phases between 2014 and 2016. Also, the pedestrian link system at Yuet Wah Street will be implemented in relation to the Kwun Tong Town Centre Redevelopment, for completion in 2015.

However, not all proposed Hillside Escalator Systems are technically feasible or financially justified, and not all are welcomed by the local communities. For example, there is local opposition to a proposed project in Pound Lane, which will undergo public engagement.

Pedestrian Schemes There are also dedicated pedestrian schemes. Since 2000, the Transport Department has implemented more than 70 pedestrian schemes in various parts of Hong Kong, including Causeway Bay, Central, Wan Chai, Mong Kok and Tsim Sha Tsui. These pedestrian schemes impose different degrees of restriction against vehicle access to provide a more pedestrian-friendly environment. While they are generally welcomed by the public, further introduction of pedestrian schemes is becoming more difficult due to limited road space available for competing needs and street management considerations. Some local residents and District Councils have raised concerns about noise and environmental problems created by the pedestrians and on-street promotion activities. This has highlighted an important factor in promoting walkability, that is, the support from the community.

A walkable city pre-supposes a community of people willing to take up walking as one of their regular ways of travelling. We need local support in introducing pedestrian facilities in specific areas, and an efficient public transport system to cover distant journeys, as well as a systemic vision and design that can free up road space and reduce motorised transport.

Ladies and gentlemen, what I have described is, of course, far short of what an ideal walkable city should be. For too long, like other big cities, Hong Kong has been working hard to cope with motorised transport by building more roads and highways, yet the number of cars keeps on increasing and traffic congestion and roadside emission

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worsens. It is indeed time for us to pause, to rethink the future of our city design and transport planning, and to put pedestrians back on our policy map.

When I was a young boy, I lived in Wan Chai, and I went to school by walking. I walked to the City Hall library every Saturday, and I walked to Causeway Bay and Happy Valley for leisure and shopping. Road traffic then wasn't as busy as now. I am not advocating a simple return to the past, but we need a more balanced mobility landscape, with good public transport access and pedestrian walkability. Walking enables us to be more observant of our interesting street scenes and to have a closer encounter with people on streets, a social experience that travelling by cars cannot provide.

In a way, walkability or not reflects the pace and character of our city, and the pace of our working life and social life. While contemplating walkability, we are at the same time reflecting on how our life should be organised, a much bigger challenge for us all.

Finally, in closing, I would like to wish this conference a great success with every participant benefiting from a multi-perspective, cross-disciplinary and constructive exchange of views and ideas. Thank you.

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Session 1: Pedestrian Network Planning

Effective Pedestrian Planning – Lessons LearntMr. Sam Chow ARUP

Morning, ladies and gentleman. It is my pleasure to have the opportunities to give you a presentation on effective pedestrian planning.

To many people, pedestrian planning seems something quite straight forward and easy to do, but I can show you that is not really the case. It is easy when there is only one person or just a few pedestrians around with a very wide road, wide sidewalk or pavement, depends if you are the Americans or British. But in Hong Kong, everyone knows in Hong Kong we have a very high density population and we have scarcity of space. I will introduce some of the effective planning, but I am not going to give you a lecture. I am going to tell you some case studies that our company has done, and some findings of research projects done by our company trying to compare the pedestrian behaviours of different Chinese cities and what we can go forward to further enhance the pedestrian planning.

These are some of the photos that people are quite familiar with in all kinds of activities like walking on the streets in Causeway Bay or Mongkok, or everyday commuting by MTR and transfer at the MTR stations and also some recreational activities like the racecourse (Figure 1). All of these, you can see, we are talking about a crowded situation that town management, which is very important and has become a critical issue about safety of people and the space, especially when things now are getting more complicated like the transport interchange at Admiralty Station. In a few years time, it will become an interchange of four MTR lines. Now there is only two but there will be four, and you can imagine it will be lots of people interchanging in a limited space. Stadium, although Hong Kong is building another one but in other cities, like in China or in Asia, they are talking about very big stadium, so we are talking about a really critical assignment on how to manage the crowd, when holding large scale events. Of course, in Hong Kong it is not uncommon to see these big events like the demonstrations every now and then. I do not know whether we have done any pedestrian planning on it. The thing is when I say "efficient", it means how to do it properly, and not just to provide the routes for people to walk, but you have to let them walk effectively. We have to improve the accessibility and barrier free access.

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Some case studies such as Traffic Study for Admiralty were done by us couple years ago. The objective here is to resolve the traffic congestion, improve pedestrian safety and provide good interchange environment. This is not a traffic study for vehicles, but also for vehicles, for pedestrians and commuters. It covers quite a wide number of stakeholders on the streets, including all kinds of vehicles and public transports, such as 9 MTR entrances/exits, 177 franchised bus routes, underground and footbridge system. If you know Admiralty a lot, there will be also tourists going to Ocean Park and also a lot of school activities. There are some of key findings. I am talking about a great number of people, talking about almost 20,000 trips during AM peak hour and 177 franchised bus routes with 680 buses with over 8,300 boarding/alighting during peak hours.

The Admiralty Traffic Study is really a first kind of work that we work on by integrating pedestrian and vehicular computer simulation. We have done many traffic studies that doing simulation trying to replicate the behaviour of vehicles. We have also done separately some pedestrian simulation model to replicate the behaviour of pedestrians, but really this is the first assignment that we have to integrate pedestrian and vehicle simulation because people may queue up at the taxi rails or get on and off the buses, or cross the street in front of the bus stops and there is an interaction between vehicles and pedestrians. I show you some video about what we have done. So this one, we try to understand the commuters getting out from the Admiralty Station. This too shows how people walk and the critical areas in different colours, like blue means sometimes it is okay to lack of surface but necessary to identify the critical areas like outside Admiralty Station at the escalator. This is a very congested area that means we have to do something on it. This shows some of the measures we have to do to relieve those congested areas and we have proposed different measures like swapping the direction of the escalators and other improvement measures like realign the movement between the MTR station and escalator to Queensway Plaza.

Something we found that in Hong Kong is not just the pedestrians

Figure 1 – Crowded situations in Hong Kong

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walking around but also activities like people boarding and alighting at bus stops , also free delivery of newspapers. That also affects the people’s behaviours. Some try to get the newspaper while some avoid the newspaper, and things like that. So the prediction of the pedestrians' behaviour is somewhat difficult. We have also looked at how to improve mobility, not just for vehicles, but also for the pedestrians, to make sure that the conflict between pedestrians and traffic will come to a minimum.

We also have other studies, like the Anderson Road Quarry. There will be some devleopments that will be housing a lot of residents there. We have also looked at how to provide the connections for pedestrians or the residents to come down to Kwun Tong area. There will be a lot of surveys and studies.

There will be more challenging works, like Admiralty Station. There will be four MTR lines interchanging there. When we try to plan the internal way findings for people, we have tool to assist the designs. We have colleagues who do not know the layout and not working on this project, so we will ask them to use the tool to behave as a pedestrian, especially when they come to this interchange for the first time. We see if they can find the way to interchange from one line to another. If the directory is not clear enough or he has hesitation, that means we can improve such as clearer signage to let people move around effectively and reduce any hesitation or conflicts. These are some photos of some of our layman colleagues tried to walk around using the tools and see whether the signage is good enough or not.

There are also (computer) many applications of stations around Asia, also it is not just for stations, also for corporations. A big corporation with headquarter in Shenzhen assigned us to look at the lobby where 10,000 workers and staff come in within one hour during peak hour by coaches. They come out from the ground floor to the lobby and then go into the lift lobby. We have to identify whether there will be enough space for people and where the congested area is so as to find out what the architects can do to improve the layout of the building because now we are talking about a large number of people.

There is another project we have in Shanghai. We tried to look at the customers walking around in their shopping mall because this shopping mall is enclosed in the MTR station. We also have to look whether the entrance is good enough and where the congested area is, and how people move around so as to identify where the congestion would happen in some particular areas. Again we will work with the architects to improve the layout, like the location of the escalator or the entrance, even there will be a wall as bottle neck.

There is another case study we are working on now with the Hong Kong Jockey Club, looking at the crowd management when there is horse-racing, we try to look into different situations of different events, looking at the magnitude of the people that are going into the racecourse. We have also done the Tsim Sha Tsui Area

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Improvement Pedestrian Study. As a result, we have proposed the widening of Canton Road pavement and Nathan Road pavement, trying to get back the space that losing to the vehicles before and now and getting back to the pedestrians was used by vehicles before for pedestrians.

This is a recent research project that our company tried to look at whether there are different behaviours of people in Shenzhen, Shanghai and Hong Kong. We tried to look at people's walking speed and things like that. This is some of the comparisons and when I looked at the result, it surprised me that Hong Kong people walk slow when compared to people in Shanghai and Shenzhen. Are we behind Shanghai now or going to fall behind Shenzhen somehow? I then asked them to look into the situation is it because Hong Kong people have a more aging population now, so we walk slower. The feedback after they checked their videos is that the selection of place for this statistic was not really 100% comparable because we chose the place is busier which means that people were not really free to maneuver. That was why they had to walk slower, because there’s more people in the situation in Hong Kong. So sometimes we cannot be fooled by the numbers. We have to look into the reason. This shows one of the reasons. We are not slow. We are still fast but because we are denser, we are busier. That is why we comparatively walk slower but that means we need to get more space, especially for the cars that could be one of the conclusions.

There are also some numbers we tried to look into. This shows a quite interesting research and I have applied further funds for our company to do further research on that. Next, we would recommend and I can show you all kinds of case studies we have done, but one very important thing that I have to show it could be misleading, is the on-site observation and understanding of behaviours are the key; and simple arrangement, sometimes it is not expensive, could resolve problems; and because pedestrian movement is not linear, it is dynamic, video survey not just often helps but is, I would say, vital. It is not just based on the boring numbers but it is very important to look into the behaviours of people in different situations. These are something we need to build up a database on that, but I think using behaviour parameters, that are something very engineering.

The way forward, we would like to enrich pedestrian database for other major cities within East Asia Region and we welcome any collaborations to work on this; and for different pedestrian types, for sure their behaviours are different and that is something we need to build up so as to come up with an effective pedestrian planning.

I think that is the conclusion on my speech this morning. Thank you.

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A Multi-Layered City – How Do We Make It Work? Mr. Paul Zimmerman Designing Hong Kong

For the first speaker, I can recall from Anthony's speech that struck me was he completed his speech in one of those final sentences - "we have to free up road space for motorised transport". That is always the presentations and policy statements from the Transport Bureau , there is always something in there ultimately about make space for motorised vehicles. What stayed with me from Sam Chow's presentation was the word dwell time. I guess engineers do not like people dwelling but if there is one thing that makes good space, and that we all like, is dwelling. If people dwell, the space is good. If people do not dwell and just walk around, like they do all these computerised-images, they quickly become an animal, a rat, a mouse, or become an insect. What we want is the ability for people to dwell. Let me just go into walkability a little bit.

In 1999, we did encourage walking in our transport policy which was in our Policy Address and we announced this precinct study that ended up without 70 pedestrianisations. Now, you can go to Jordan and see the leftovers of that in the street, some red painted tarmac. It is kind of the usual outcome of that, still there. It was in a precinct study that Townland did, by Keren Seddon. These are the problems and I think everybody can recognise that those are still very much the problems today that we see in our pedestrian environment.

In the 2001 Keren Seddon's study, the solution was that we have "comprehensive integrated pedestrian networks". In 2004, after the Transport Department had taken account of that study, it became "comprehensive segregated pedestrian networks". Either 2001 or 2004, you got to keep in mind that what happened when the Planning Department did the study with the planners and then it went to the Transport Department and said, "We like it" and then they added one word "segregated". "Wherever possible, we do grade-separated crossings" and there is a "clear correlation between the increase in the number of grade-separated crossings and the reduction in pedestrian accidents". We not only think that is great to build footbridges and also justifiable to do because fewer people die. Whether this is really scientific, it is the Audit Commission, their accountants will have to see.

The Policy Address in 2008 included pedestrian schemes covering footbridges, so we were getting more footbridges and escalators. In 2010, I got a letter back from the Secretary of Transport, Housing and Urban Development Department at that time that he was encouraging walking and by implementing "comfortable all-weather walking corridors which obviate the need to walk on the road". Walking can be improved as long as we get people off the road. It improves the pedestrian safety and minimises short motorised trips. We all agree to that getting people off the road is policy. In the CE Manifesto 2012, the reliance on transport facilities was reduced

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again. We are talking about footbridges and connection and physical infrastructure to get people between the train and buildings with escalators, walkways and flyovers.

The result is that we now have one footbridge or tunnel for every 2 kilometres of road. I don't think there is any other city in the world that has that density, and we have articles in magazines that basically explained that we all hate it. We knew that we hated it because in 2003, the Government did a census survey of pedestrian environment and 70% of the people said "I want to walk at street level. I don't want to use the footbridge. I don't want to use the subway. I want to use the street level crossing". Actually, the police tells us too, that pedestrians ignore footbridges and they cross the roads, climb over the kerbside fences. This is normal human behaviour when you try to do what you like to do.

This is the census report 2003, Designing Hong Kong, we did a survey and again it come back with 76% of people prefer street level crossings over the subways, especially when the weather is nice. So we asked people in the different weather conditions. When it rains, people want the tunnel. We're very happy to climb in a tunnel and up the staircase if it rains and we're happy to use the subway and footbridges and then we go down to 20% of people who like to be on the streets, but when it's hot, we have 41% willing to walk on the road, otherwise, we want to walk in a subway and footbridges." We are willing to pay the price of climbing upstairs and going downstairs when the weather is not very pleasant. We also asked whether the choice factors in terms of your walking routes, and obviously short, easy, less crowded, attractive, are some of the key ones. We also checked when people do want to use the tunnel and the bridge, why do they want to do that-feel safer, better air and less crowded. So they have some choice. Conclusion from our side, it is really that if we offer the route choice, if you offer the possibility for walking at street level and have an opportunity to take a subway or a footbridge, and it can be well combined and not forced up and down, then that is good.

If we can organise in Hong Kong life to be like that that, then things are good. Unfortunately, life is mostly like this, which is not very good. How do we get to this away from that is something that we should today think about in our planning. We did try to analyse some of the districts and for that we needed some tools. We look for a mapping exercise and tools to analyse the districts. If you have overlapping infrastructure, and you try to map the pedestrian environment, it becomes extremely difficult to do. It tried to make the place that pedestrians can walk white, the roads grey. You can identify subway levels in another color, but obviously it does not work (Figure 2).

You can ask Solomon of Hong Kong University and then he will get you this (Figure 3). Obviously, it does not work to help you to understand but it is kind of interesting. Everybody in the States loves his book about the city without ground in Hong Kong but it is a pretty useless tool to analyse or to kind of map it out. It is kind of a nice piece of art.

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I tried to come up with a new system. We asked the Transport Department and they gave us this (Figure 4). I am not sure if you could figure out where you can walk and where you can’t walk, and how to get up and down. You get the indications of where the footbridges are being built and the subways are being built, but I am not sure if it really tells you walkability.

Figure 2 – Pedestrian-oriented map by Designing Hong Kong

Figure 3 – Pedestrian-oriented map from Jonathan D Solomon

Figure 4 - Pedestrian-oriented map of Tsim Sha Tsui from Transport DepartmentDepartment

So we came up with this very childish design model (Figure 5) and It is a mapping exercise. The red roads are roads that you cannot cross. This is Tsim Sha Tsui. You can immediately see from the green area where you can walk and what the environment is – you have a lot of open space, public space and parks in Tsim Sha Tsui East; and lots of small little allies, lanes in this part of Tsim Sha Tsui; and you get very large and long roads here but you cannot cross. I think from this very childish presentation you can get a much better feel of what the actual environment is in Tsim Sha Tsui, and then we can say, where is our subway network? They are marked out in yellow and is actually quite comprehensive. If you want to get from Nathan Road to the

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waterfront, you can also see immediately that for some reason the Government and Cheung Kong never get an agreement on the little tunnel that they should have built here. It was on the plans but they never build it because they cannot agree with the land premium. But of course that would help everybody a lot to get to the waterfront. And you can see in Tsim Sha Tsui, an elevated network is basically non-existent. You get from the waterfront onto a park, and then that is it. You get into Tsim Sha Tsui East, they now started to connect a little bit better, Sino is investing some money. You can get into Wharf land, Wheelock land here in this building, but it is basically non-existent. So if you want to fix things in Tsim Sha Tsui, at the street level we got to get a crossing back across Salisbury Road or we got to fix that link in the subways if you want to get that back, and if you look at the demands.

Figure 5 - Pedestrian-oriented map of Tsim Sha Tsui from Designing Hong Kong

Let's look at Central. Again, we asked Highways Department to give a mapping of the pedestrian connections, we got this like this (Figure 6). It is a very technical linkage drawing but it does not really give you a sense of things working or not working.

Figure 6 - Pedestrian-oriented map of Central from Transport Department

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So we did the childish one (Figure 7). Again you can see clearly the quality of walking environment. Small streets, large blocks, impossible to cross and especially when you try to cross at this line – it is entirely impossible to cross roads at any time. The subway system is actually minor and not a very extensive network, but we got an extensive elevated network, very well connected all the way to Admiralty, all the way back through Central. This is what everybody celebrates as being a fantastic alternative network and it works well. The only reason why it works well is because this is led by the developer that owns a lot of buildings there. It was not led by the MTR. The MTR feeds you in and out of their stations while the developer wants you in and out of their buildings because these buildings are placed throughout the district. It became a district network by accident, not because Government planned that way. So we were lucky in this case.

The question is how can we emulate this kind of planning in other districts? How can we make sure that this happens in Mongkok, Tsim Sha Tsui and Causeway Bay so that we can all celebrate our second network? If you overlay some walking desire lines, the obvious thing that needs to be fixed is that the MTR has to allow us to open the tunnel without having to pay money and then we will have a subway connection from the waterfront to the inner land. But that would be an additional capacity on the desire line. They cannot do it. Fire Services Department probably will not allow them to do it but may be they can. Let them think about it.

Tsuen Wan is a very different environment but again, high capacity roads (Figure 8). Most of them you entirely cannot cross. Some roads are intermittent so you can cross. The biggest problem with this network here, the elevated network is very extensive - You get lost. There is no way you can find where to get from A to B.

Figure 7 - Pedestrian-oriented map of Central from Designing Hong Kong

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And in Tai Kok Tsui is exactly the same problem (Figure 9). Try to figure out how to get from Mongkok to the waterfront. You got to find that footbridge, go across, find the footpath here, into the building, find that footbridge here, cut across here, find the footbridge here, go down the road here, take the footbridge here and then go down to the waterfront. It is impossible to find the way unless you live there and you know what to do.

Figure 8 - Pedestrian-oriented map of Tsuen Wan from Designing Hong Kong

Figure 9 – Pedestrian-oriented map of Tai Kok Tsui from Designing Hong Kong

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Now, this is Argyle Street. Look at the little girl, look at her feet and look at what she does to avoid the taxi (Figure 12).

When we build new roads, the Kai Tak for example, look what we do to the pedestrian environment. You can live here with beautiful waters and feuture desires here, but see what we do by the amount of roads we are going to build up for the central Kowloon route, 20 hectares of no-man's land (Figure 10).

I am going to point out some other problems. On our street levels, if you want to improve things, we allow new buildings to be built in North Point, the Oil Street redevelopment. We originally were about to walk this street here, and now with fences here that allow the cars to go in and force pedestrians to do a detour (Figure 11).

Figure 10 – No-man’s land in Kai Tak Figure 11 – Detour in North Point

Look at the mother and her little boy, and look what she does to her boy before the BMW (Figure 13). Fighting is what we are forced to do. Look left, look right.

Figure 12 – Little girl crossing Argyle Street

Figure 13 – Mother and boy crossing Argyle Street

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No rights for the pedestrians, rights for the cars. This is from the rooftop (Figure 14).

Figure 14 – Argyle Street corner from the rooftop

Actually, every Government official working in the North Point Government offices walks this from the MTR station (Figure 15). This is the main pedestrian link along King's Road, and here crossing the road next to this old lady and you can see this is the line we are walking except there is a taxi who pushes us away. Then if you go back, the design here, I’m telling the drivers go fast around the corner, don’t wory, don’t worry, don’t worry, go fast! This is the design of our junctions. This is what we do – against pedestrians in favor of the cars, and tell the cars to get around the corner quick. Absurd!

Figure 15 – Old lady crossing in North Point

I have no idea why anybody in Hong Kong would accept this kind of behaviour from their Government. This is criminal. I think this is a totally unacceptable turning corner. This is called a turning lane. It is to improve the capacity but it is completely unnecessary on this junction and it is anti-pedestrian in the biggest possible way. So Government should fix that but this is an attitude and we have to find a way of addressing it.

Obstructions on the streets – we put railings and railings which become clothes hangers and cabinets. Everywhere we put a railing, we just create an excuse for gathering more obstructions on our streets. Railings are bad in many ways.

Public space – we have asked iSquare to set back the building but we allow them to have events and events are done at night when everybody wants to go to this space (Figure 16). Excuse me, we asked you to set back that building!

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We put out our own seats, go to anyhousing estates, any bus stop in the New Territories – how ridiculous is this in a city of this wealth and richness? School benches have an extra use (Figure 18).

Seats – there are no seats in our city. This is at iSquare – so we allow events and we’ve created more space, but no benches. Our tourists at the waterfront and Golden Bauhinia Square got no seats. Number one tourist destination in Hong Kong Island got no seats (Figure 17) .

Figure 16 – Events at iSquare

Figure 17 – No seats in tourist destinations in Hong Kong

Figure 18 – Benches at bus stop

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And shopping mall is commercial space, so we don't let anybody to sit anywhere either (Figure 19). So there is no space to sit.

Figure 19 – Seating at shopping malls

Toilets – I’m appalled by these comments about mainland visitors having kids pee in the streets. My daughter is three years old. When she gets me a warning that she is going to pee, she got to pee. I have not given any time. The amount of public toilets available in Hong Kong is minimal. Because you and I have lived here for such a long time, we know we can climb into a hotel or shopping mall. We can know where we are going to go. But someone who is visiting has no idea. The kid has got to pee. Stop complaining on the internet about mainlanders having the kids pee in the streets, unless you give them toilets. Then you can start complaining.

Way finding is a big problem. This is an MTR map in Tsim Sha Tsui but they forgot to put two maps in there.This is the tunnel to Sun Plaza, it’s not on their map.This is the footbridge to the tunnel to Time Out (Figure 20). And I’m just point this last point: the advertisement is right on top of the Highways Department tunnel network, it is an extension of that. We get mapping problems.

Ladies and gentleman, thank you for allowing me to entertain you. Thank you.

Figure 20 – Incomplete map of Tsim Sha Tsui by MTR

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Universally Accessible Pedestrian EnvironmentMr. Joseph Kwan UDA Consultants Ltd.

I think after Paul’s interesting talk, he’s already highlighted a number of things – even as an able, normal person to get around the connectivity and all that, it is not so good in Hong Kong. Just imagine if you were in a wheelchair. I do not see any wheelchair users in here. There is no vision-impaired person here. There is no blind person here. I came in this venue also by walking this morning. If I was coming, which I did from Ngau Tau Kok Station, in wheelchair, can you imagine the route? So what has happened? This is my approach which I think we should look at it. I think we are looking at it very, very narrowly, from a very, very straight angle.

We plan for cities. Most of you are planners in various forms. We build for society and we design for people. Let's not forget that. I certainly do not design for cars. A number of you do because obviously they are good reasons to design for cars. But let's look at where we’re coming from as professionals – what is our responsibility, what are we doing? Do we just design for the young, the fit and the able? What happens to the older ones, the less-able and not so fit, and people with disabilities? Or is it all of the above? I believe it should be all of the above. Look at Paul's studies, a lot of ourselves are highly disconnected. You cannot, as a wheelchair person, as a blind person, get around the city very, very well at all. What is the reason? And it is not something we are trying to do in Hong Kong. It has been happening for quite some time.

The United Nations came out with a new Convention basically on Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It took them five years to build and discuss to come up with this particular document. So back in 2006, it was adopted by the General Assembly (UN GA) and 2008 it into force. This is a very powerful legal instrument, even though it is unenforceable in a way, as it relies on the responsibility of States and parties in the countries to adopt this. And basically the Convention prohibits discrimination against persons with disabilities in all areas of life. They are all people, just like you and I.

A couple of the Articles talk about universal design. Article 9 talks about accessibility and Article 30 talks about participation in cultural life, recreation, leisure and sport. This is what it’s all about. We want to get to the streets. We want to join ourselves, not to stuck at some corners. Article 9 aims to enable persons with disabilities to live independently and participate fully in all aspects of life. The country must do things. That is why Hong Kong Government in the last few years promised to do more, not because it wanted to, but because China did. Because China is signatory, Hong Kong is not. Hong Kong and Macau are following a number of things because of what the Chinese do.

Who do we design for? This is only a sector of the population – not all of us here. This is only a sector of the population which we tend to neglect and forget. The latest WHO figure says 15% of the world's population has some sort of disability. Now the figure has come up to one billion

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people. That is a lot of people, almost the size of China or India. And estimated 80% of those live in developing countries, which is around our region also.

The other group of people we should be dealing with is the elderly. I think the previous speaker has already mentioned it. Look at some of the figures here. In Asia, for instance, even though we are not far ahead as Japan – Japan already has problems for a long time 20 to 30 years. That is why they design for the silver society in transportation and building. They are way ahead in the design, that is why they produce so many good things. In Asia, we are following up fairly closely. For China, by 2050, 30% of the people will be 60 years old and above. Obviously, we are all going to be in this age group.

It is our city. If our city is designed and planned, we can still go out and use it equally well. Not so at the moment. The Hong Kong Law has the Disability Discrimination Ordinance (DDO). It is a very interesting instrument which gives them the rights to do things and Equal Opportunities Commission was set up to implement and monitor this. There are design manual and building regulations. All these are part of it.

Recently, the Architectural Services Department (ASD) has produced a document "Universal Accessibility for External Areas, Open Spaces & Green Spaces". This is still very much a guidance document. I believe now some of the Government projects tend to need to at least make a reference to it, then you need to tick a box "UA" (universal access), but how well do we implement it – this is another thing that we need to look at. At least, it is something about universal access.

When we design for universal access for pedestrian environment, a number of constraints we will look at. The topography of Hong Kong is obviously quite different from places nice and flat; safety and convenience; the balance of needs; pedestrian environment, that is what I'd like to talk about today; motorised and non-motorised transport; and of course protection of outdoor works.

Pedestrian access ways – we talked about the access routes. Very, very important, I think. Some of the access routes are blocked because of whatever out on the streets, such as garbage, signage, whatever. It is not well planned, not well designed. Level change is very important, regarding footbridges and subways. If you were a wheelchair user, that is the first barrier. Street crossing points are terrible. We can do better. I am sure we can borrow from Japan to see what can be done. Service materials obviously we don’t consider much and it is very important; Street furniture – seating; Tactile paving surfaces; and lastly Information and communication. How can our environment be improved and let a blind person or anybody, tourist, travel much easier.

Very important I think is the connectivity. Previous speakers have mentioned it in terms of a wheelchair user or as a blind person, how effective is our connectivity? Can I walk outside? Can I get to the nearest MTR Station? Is it well connected? It is not well connected for a blind person. Can I get there equally well? We must look at the seamless transition. Things must be seamless. Very, very simply

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a rubbish bin already stops my transition. I cannot get around. How interactive is the place? Interface of one to another, one transportation to another; one building environment to another; and the interface of building environment and transportation, and any road system. What we really need is an accessible continuation of this for our travel chain.

No doubt we know what barriers are. Crossing the street? We cannot do it. For pedestrian pushing a pram, where do you go from there (Figure 21)? I do not need to tell you what the problems are. If you were pushing a pram, or in a wheelchair, can you do that? Is this meant to be a friendly interface of one surface to another? Terrible. This is closer to home. Can that sort of pavement help the environment? For that sort of pedestrian crossing, if you were in a wheelchair or pushing a pram, the situation of course is a problem, and the access route can be blocked. We have a footpath but if someone put a litter or that sort of thing, it’ll be totally inaccessible.

What is the problem? Where is the problem? How are we thinking? What are we thinking? And this one – give you two seconds, what are the three barriers you can see there? One, two, three. Is that a very friendly park entrance (Figure 22)? Can you go there with a pram? Can you go there in a wheelchair? No. And therefore, this poor guy – we are talking about road safety. This poor guy is completely denied access on where he should be – the pedestrian walkway. He’s getting pushed onto the street. We have this in Hong Kong also, we also have this in other Asian cities.

Figure 21 – Pedestrian barriers Figure 22 – Unfriendly parking space

Look at this. It is a barrier to the visual-impaired (Figure 23). Can you see there are steps here? One, two, three. Can you see there are steps here? Can you count the number of steps here? Can you imagine this, in the evening, with low lighting? You, I, my grandmother – would you let her go down there without a handrail? These are the macro stuff. We are talking about the micro when we are talking about thedesigning, planning, etc but is this solution?

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Figure 23 – Barrier to visual-impaired

Universal design is the solution. One major definition of "universal design" is the design of products, environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible. It is not one solution for everybody, but to the greatest extent possible usable by all people. That’s they way we are going. We do not design anymore exclusively for wheelchair users or people with permament disabilities. We design for all people. This is where the concept of universal design comes in.

Research shows that with universal design, 40% of the population will benefit. Not just the 5 or 2 per cent of wheelchair users, but 40% will benefit. That is what we are looking for. That is what we want to do. That is an accessible environment. That is Japan and that is even Macau (Figure 24). That gives this person the independency to go shopping, to go around wherever he likes without having to rely on somebody else.

Figure 24 – Accessibility in Japan and Macau

Japan is a very, very good example of accessible open space and public space, from connecting the station across the street, in Yokohama City. You see how well defined the streets are, how well way-finding is put in for a blind person – wonderful street systems with clearly marked lanes, separate pedestrian walkway, tactile information that takes you right through to wherever you have to go. It is quite pleasant to

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look at the environment like this. Everybody can use it. Everybody can appreciate the street, and even the bus stops (Figure 25). A very simple bus shelter and the guiding paths take you to a bus stop. So if you were a blind person, it takes you to the bus stop and there are shelters there provided for you and it even takes you right across into the building by maps that everyone can use. This is not a map for the blind or that only certain people can use. We can all use the map. Guidance system if needed and a good way of planting trees not haphazardly. So you will always have clear accessible routes for whoever needs them.

Figure 25 – Bus stop in Japan

This is what I call livable cities, livable streets. Paul, we should do more of this. What are you doing, Paul? This is what we want, these are people sitting. Look at this environment – you can have a smoke here, you can do whatever you want. This is what we’re looking for, this is what we want. Japan can do it. Why can't Hong Kong? And the seamless interface is really quite seamless. Crossing streets and road levels without all those curves or anything that stops you going anywhere. Footpaths between the building are quite smooth and quite easy. Of course, we have this system which is wonderful and even in their footbridges, they provide the provisions for the blind to be able to read in Braille and raised letters to communicate to the person you’re going up, done, or whatever.

Singapore is doing quite good in the new areas (Figure 26). I hope our new town is going to be equally good. Singapore used to behind us. Now no doubt certain areas in Singapore are ahead of us in terms of accessibility.

Figure 26 – Accessibility in Singapore

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Great streets in Vienna, what they’re providing is information for the blind persons to cross the street (Figure 27). Very simple, and mapping system in order to help the blind persons to cross the street.

Figure 27 – Tactile information in Vienna for street crossing

Berlin has well defined footpaths, bicycle lanes, street crossings (Figure 28). Fairly good.

Figure 28 – Accessibility in Berlin

Sydney, Australia – once again, wonderful city for outoor life. Universally accessible, nice and cheap way of providing street information in Braile, tactile and letters (Figure 29). Everybody can use. I can read it. You can use it, and a blind person can use it, with good and well defined street crossings, color-contrasting, accessible.

Figure 29 – Street information in Sydney

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Raised crossings which I like very much in Hong Kong. I think raised street crossing not only reduce the cars, but gives a level access across one pedestrian lane sidewalk to the next.

I'd like to see more countdowns in Hong Kong. I do not know why we do not have countdowns in Hong Kong yet, for cars as well as for pedestrians (Figure 30). If you hit the remote control, it gives you the extra time if you need it, especially when pushing a pram, taking a luggage and in a wheelchair when crossing our streets. We cannot exclude anymore. We cannot be discriminative to anymore. For those people who are physically challenged or disabled, universal design must be inclusive and accessible. I think pedestrian environment must be going toward this direction.

Some of the inaccessible facilities versus accessible facilities (Figure 31). Shenzhen has totally accessible universal design. Berlin is a good example of really nice products inuniversal design: telephone booths – a range of different options, nicely designed for anyone, tall, short, wheelchair users, anybody can use this system.

Figure 30 – Traffic signals with countdown in China

Figure 31 – The inaccessible facilities versus accessible facilities

Even better still, e-information provides phone, internet and city information, all within this little gadget (Figure 32).

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Figure 32 – E-info booth

Why don't we have any public toilets which are universally accessible, for wheelchair users and universally different languages as well (Figure 33)? Where are they all? Seating – as we mentioned. Why don’t we have more seating for older persons? These are various facilities we can design; we can design a tactile map or universal map that could be read by a blind person that he or she can actually appreciate the information without seeing it. He or she can still read information that is a map used by all people.

Figure 33 – Universally accessible public toilet

Interface between transportation to building is very important. From building to transportation system do we have that interface or interchange? In Japan, from building they can take it right from the train station all the way to public walkway, two maps that lead you to a particular building entrance where he or she can go right in and there are eve maps inside the building. So this is the seamless thing. We are approaching the aging society in Japan and that is why about two years ago, we retrofitted all the subway stations. We tend to forget pedestrian walkways. Subways are also pedestrian system, not only some above-ground.

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Connectivity gets blind persons to machines, right through the pedestrian subway, rightup to the mapping system itself. It takes you right up to the lift and eventually out of the system without assistance, but provided you have good infrastructure put in. Paris starts looking at low floor buses at bus stops. This is the bus stop in Berlin with this gadget and good seats. The gadgets you can use many things for. I like this particular system in Paris, very simple and use a stand to show you where the bus stops are or buses pass through this particular line. The line is wheelchair accessible. It gives you real time showing the next line, next station, the next bus is coming in eleven minutes or next twenty five minutes. These signs are accessible. So why can't we do this in Hong Kong? We are always complaining about having too many high rise buildings that GPS does not work. The bus system in Paris is about connection between bus stops to the sidewalks. They are building the raised crossing. I think this could be done better but they are attempting. A raised crossing could get you off the street and up to the sign easily.

Transportation is important. We have accessible taxis, accessible cars, interface that allows parking stop to get people in and out of the cars whether they are drivers or passengers. Water transport – we have a lot in Hong Kong, in Asia. How well is the interconnection between Star Ferry and those Outlying Island Ferries? How easy and accessible are they? Information and Communication technology – many information and technology things are in Japan. We can use I.T. to help a person navigate the street. Let’s look into that. You don’t want to be that person. You want to be that person.

In Sydney, you want to be up on the street, in the street. That is what livable city is all about (Figure 34).

We have all the guidelines in the world. We need international pictograms and really reliable languages (Figure 35).

This is a guide path built in Hong Kong (Figure 36). If you were a blind person, you will not want to use this, right? What has happened? Where are our professionals going? Are we just designing for the developers? I do not know who designed these things. This is a very up market housing, not the housing for the poor.

Figure 34 – Universally accessible streets

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Finally, I’m beginning to see better things happening here - this is happening in UK and we want this (Figure 37). We want accessibility that can be used by everybody. We want to get everybody out there. Finally, hopefully, I do not want to be too specific on the word "walkable". If you were a wheelchair user, you do not walk. Let's call it “universally accessible” city, a living city with a standard that can go to the “street” or “public domain” by interconnection of water, parks, etc.

Figure 35 – Universal signage

Figure 36 – Guided path in Hong Kong

Figure 37 – Accessibility in UK

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Chair ResponseMr. Oren Tatcher OTC Ltd.

What’s clear to me and probably everyone watching the presentations, is how much, I would say 90 or 99 per cent of what would be good for people with disabilities would also be good for the general public. That is a good thing to remember when people try to present it as conflicting interest. I also want to point out before my short presentation that Hong Kong’s recent focus on just adding lifts to access pedestrian bridges is not necessarily the best solution for universal accessibility or the most pressing universal accessibility issue in Hong Kong.

I just want to touch very quickly on the good and the bad and the evil in walking in Hong Kong. I am saying this as someone who has been walking in Hong Kong for ten years, someone who loves to walk.

The Good – bringing you close to your destination. So you do not actually have to walk very much and that is a good comment about our public transport system, we all know it is great, the trains, the buses and minibuses, the ferry, the taxis. The reason that it is so good is because you are never too far from a bus stop and again the good thing is there is always a public transport to take you there; the bad thing is you are not expected to walk very far, you are only expected to walk as far as the bus stop or the ferry terminal or the MTR station.

The Pretty Good – walking access to the services. Some of you may be familiar with the idea of "walk score", which is the system invented in the US where basically wherever you are, based on GPS, it tells you how close you are to various services such as shopping, schools and so on, and ranks your location. It is very useful as a way of evaluating property values. As you can see, some cities in the US are very green which means you are very close to everything. Some are very red which means you have to drive to get to pretty much anywhere. In New York, it is a very green city in the sense you can walk everywhere. But people today publish their properties by giving them walk score, not just in New York but everywhere in the US It is a great way to measure walkability as something that actually enhances their property value. How Hong Kong would score we do not quite know. It is a bit difficult to measure it in the same way as in the US and other western cities. But generally speaking, you can say that most places of Hong Kong are close to most services or it looks like that, or it looks like this which is some of the housing estates have their own shopping facilities, or ultimately it looks like this which is the typical MTR development with shopping downstairs and housing on top. So it is convenient. And of course, developments like this.

The Bad – strategic walking. Hong Kong does not encourage strategic walking. By strategic walking I mean walking for a long distance, and that’s the flip side of what I said earlier as opposed to walking to the nearest MTR station or to the nearest bus stop. It easy to compare New York to Hong Kong, both were sort of started around the same

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time, well at least Manhattan was laid out the bulk of it around the time Hong Kong was founded. The difference is that Manhattan continued to develop itself in a way that created a very pedestrian friendly environment, like this, which is like an undifferentiated grid where people can walk wherever they want, for as long as they want without expecting to be stopped by a highway or other various miscellaneous barriers. Hong Kong was started out in a similar fashion in some of the old parts, turned into something like this. This is a Hong Kong area with all the barriers and bridges and so on. So it is not a very convenient walking environment. The result is, in New York, an 800m distance can be traversed in infinite number of ways. You can basically choose any path you like. I go to New York often and this is exactly what I do. In Hong Kong, by comparison, 800m, let's say from the Grand Hyatt to Pacific Place, a similar distance with all the barriers, the various limited crosswalks and the pedestrian bridges. THere are exactly; we did measure that, exactly two ways to do that. So when it gets to the walking beyond the 2-minute walk to the bus stop or to the MTR station, you are facing great difficulties in Hong Kong with very few choices. Choices may be a problem for some of our engineers that are in charge of designing the urban mobility because choices are very hard to predict and it is very hard to model. So it may be better to have less choice because it is easier to manage.

The Evil – getting there is the evil part. Getting there is not fun at all, you know how they say getting there is half the fun – not in Hong Kong. In New York, people can walk side by side, tell jokes to each other, even in Paris and in Tokyo. In New York, you can actually look at people. You can have a sidewalk cafe and interact with the world. You can see things, you can dwell, as Paul was saying. In Hong Kong, you cannot do any of these things. It is just not fun. It is crowded or it is empty. It is over-engineered and empty. It is sterile. It is lean. It is over-commercialised. In the end, this is what we have. What we have is people are engineered to walk on pedestrian walkways in a very unpleasant environment and look at the luxury meanwhile that motor vehicles enjoy thus below.

Question & Answer Session

Question:

When I hear the words "minimising pedestrian and vehicle conflicts", I was worried because more footbridges will make the ground level more sterile and just useful only for the cars. I know some of the other people are trying to drive away from that but Hong Kong, we have Central which is very walkable and accessible. Why not apply it in other places? I would like to see it, because even Singapore is copying Hong Kong. They said they want separate pedestrian paths and traffic and more footbridges. I am not against footbridges but you need to be careful. I would like keeping the ground level, widen and access a little.

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Mr. Sam Chow:

I think sometimes we need to look at the cruel facts. If we do not separate the pedestrians from the vehicles, you can see that there is a lot of fatality in the traffic accidents. I do not mean that we have to give priority to the vehicles. When it comes to Government policies, or whether the public will accept a better priority to pedestrians, like if we find that our road space is not enough, we want to keep the ground floor road space used by all stakeholders, including pedestrians, equally. I think the policy will come to the Government that they have to reduce the number of vehicles first. That means impose even heavier tax on the vehicles, or even have the whole Central a walk space only on street. But if the public say that, I am sure that we, as an engineer, we cannot do that. But it is not up to us to do this. It is the policymakers and also the public, and it is no easy solution. It could be better if we can have some evidence, like Tsim Sha Tsui or like some city centres, at least maybe for some weekends, make it as a walkable street, stop vehicles going in. But of course there may be objections from the shopping mall owners: “I want the car drivers to come”. So it is no easy question. I mean everyone has to strike a balance.

Mr. Oren Tatcher:

I have a response for that because I think I understand what she wants to say. I think that the paradigm of vehicles and pedestrians leads to the thinking that it is either pedestrians on the streets or vehicles on a highway, but there are many, many solutions in between which are proven worldwide to be road safe and conducive to both pedestrian activities and vehicle movement. And I do think Sam, to be honest, as an engineer to educate people and Government about these things; traffic coning has been exercising in many places around the world now very successfully and vibrantly mixed with the environment. The paradigm that has to be separation is the road problem we are facing.

Mr. Paul Zimmerman:

I have a point of that one. I mean we cannot get away from a need for multilayered network because we are a very high density city. So we all agree that we need priority for street level. Footbridge will never be an excuse for a removal of a pedestrian crossing and it is so far away. “There is a footbridge so I do not have to give you the pedestrian crossing”, and then what will result in is that you have this constant elevation change you are forced to make. We have to get to the city where we do not have forced elevation entrance. Then it comes to the issue of what the problem is, the difference between an elevated pedestrian network and a ground level pedestrian network. The primary difference is public space and the public right of access, public right of recreation. We have not been able to envelop public right of access, public right of recreation at an elevated level and similarly, not at the subway level.

For subway level, we got five safety issues. There are lots of constraints there. Elevated level is a risk. You have less safety issues, and you could resolve it but it requires intensive good planning and primarily how Government handles the land premiums. It can be a mess. There is no planning. There is no implementation schedule. If I

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take a subway level from Middle Road to the Sheraton Hotel, you can walk straight from the waterfront. That one exists because there was no land premium. If you look at the plan for the subway in Causeway Bay, it is a mess, because Transport Department is strangling without having creed with the Lands Department on how they were going to organise the land premiums for the buildings along the pedestrian walkways and the subway to connect them. We got to get new planning implementation and new arrangement to sort it out if you want to get to a level that accepts the segregated network as a similar value to the exterior as a street level.

Question:

You identify which roads are the main intersections. For example in Wanchai, all the inner city, or in Central, main users of many streets are pedestrians. If you go further out, there is no fun at all to stay there for. No shopping preference, big blocks. Why do you want to walk down there? Nobody is interested in walking. If we allow this often in the inner streets in Central, Wanchai, at that point we have instant road space. We can actually close up all the inner-road road space for pedestrians. Then you can freeze the road space inside the Queen's Road, the long tram way, all the way up Hollywood Road. Why don't we put the entire switch down on this side, Central, Wanchai Bypass. I don't mind them building wider, building more, as long as you close the inside streets, make it walkable, make it more fun. That is what we want, but then when you walk across Gloucester Road, Connaught Road, you don't want to go on. Those are at street level. They have six, eight-lane wide. How to cross it? Generally there are a lot of traffic control problems as well. For walkways that is no problem. The problem is our architects. The problem is our designers on that particular level. In Admiralty somebody showed the shops there, where basically is an interchange. Everywhere is walkway with all the shops on the first floor. Do you find Admiralty disgusting, repulsing to walk through? I find that interesting because the shops are up there. Why do we have nothing on the other walkways? Why don't we allow some stores along? Is it over-managed? We have a phobia of maintenance. All that management does not want to maintain nor manage. They clear all the seats, clear everything. In a five-minute walkway there is no fun but we can make it fun, make it wider, make it like Central with stores, seats everywhere. Then we will find it fun and some free pedestrian space.

Question:

Hong Kong is far too car-centred. I wonder if we could close all the roads. Cars produce air pollution and create lots of health problems. What is the possibility of introducing bicycle paths? We do not have any public debate yet. Raise the public awareness and have more public walkable streets.

Mr. Joseph Kwan:

I do not know whether there is any policy in this respect. You can certainly look into it. But in terms of bicycle lanes, certain cities are actually looking into making the city friendlier for pedestrians and bicycles. Paris is one. Paris is certainly a city where it puts in a lot

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of rental bicycles. One spot to next, we can pick up a bicycle using a credit card and drop it off in another place. I think Japan is also doing it. I actually introduced a system where you can walk to work, or ride to work rather than riding in a car. Hong Kong has to look into it.

Mr. Paul Zimmerman:

Just this morning, Anthony Cheung mentioned that Government is looking at the cycling policy and they are going to come out more positive statements. I saw Martin Turner somewhere in the room. Martin is with Hong Kong Cycling Alliance. I think it is going to be an area of where you can easily sort it out, like the New Territories, Lamma, Mui Wo, Lantau, everywhere you have less conflict. I hope we can sort it out for Kai Tak. There is a current plan for Kai Tak to have a cycling track for leisure but no connection to the residential area. So the little kids are going to be on the bicycle and going to be killed on the road because somebody forgot to connect the residential area with the cycling track unfortunately. I hope that will be sorted out.

Mr. Sam Chow:

Talking about rental bicycle, I think we do not need to look at Paris or Tokyo because over a dozen cities in China have already done that. We are well behind that in that context. Maybe not in Hong Kong as Kowloon area’s road space is really limited. You need a drastic change of views, not only for Government, but the public as well. In New Territories there is a lot more space that they can build a better cycling network to encourage people to use it. Pollution’s main source is not just cars but mainly it is the public buses. I do not know how to deal with that unless there are some new technologies that can produce really efficient motors for the CO2 efficient buses and trucks. While we still pick this airport port in the world for air cargo, we still have one of the biggest container ports. Unless that situation changes, we still need trucks. It is a pity but you have to strike a balance.

Mr. Joseph Kwan:

Everybody may think universal access is quite hard to do because it is costly. We should do it right at the beginning so it is user-friendly. Everybody can use it whether you are an aged person, a wheelchair person. You are pushing a pram. It is very important.

Mr. Paul Zimmerman:

I mentioned to Anthony Cheung that the Transport Department used to have a pedestrian facility scheme. They have been soft with these guys from the Central district office. But we need a task force. We need top-level thinking within Government about how to balance various modes of transport, and pedestrians and cyclists and so on. We need a lot of changes, change of different departments whether it is Housing Authority or the Transport Department. You need a lot of changes to happen throughout the Government. And changing management is a trick and it needs to happen at the top. We have to spend more time to talk to Anthony to get him put in the resource, put in the thinking in there that can help to drive this because the ability is there, the willingness is there but it is really hard. I spoke to a guy from Shatin. He works at Highways Department and we met

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a lot of cyclists. He has problems at the junctions to the point that he said, "I hate cyclists. I want to get rid of them because I cannot solve the problems with the current standard and guidelines". So he cannot solve the problems. His job is too difficult now to get it right. He does not have the tools to get it right. This is someone who wants to do it right but we need real help at the top to drive the change of management.

Mr. Sam Chow:

I think I will look at things that balance different ways but I am sure there are a lot of things that can be done to improve the walkability in our city, especially in those CBD (Central business district) areas. I like to walk in the streets in European cities. Whenever there is a public bicycle rental, I try to see what I can rent. But it all depends on the environment. It is not whether there are existing public rental bicycles. I remember when I met a cyclist, the bike was very nice. I saw people with this very attractive bicycle and tried to ask where to rent it. He said I could not as I had to be a citisen. I went to Brussels and there are also public rental bicycles. I could use it because it accepts credit cards but I think the traffic was too busy, and I dared not to do it. I think it is not just whether you have one tool or the other. It is really the whole environment that will make a wiser decision whether to walk, to cycle, to take public transport. I remember at the moment I was working for Zhuhai last time, I presented to the mayor and said, "We have to declare ‘war’ on the vehicles. We need more space for the pedestrians". Surprisingly the mayor agreed. I hope they would implement the solution that I proposed to them soon, not just something vocal.

Mr. Oren Tatcher:

One of the most surprising aspects is that the issue of pedestrians in Hong Kong is residual. Paul said we need a task force. I think we need more than a task force. We need someone to speak for the pedestrians at the very top. It will be the equivalent of Highways Department. In fact the Highways Department is in charge of pedestrians. It is a bit absurd and that is why it ends up having all the fun in the city where all the pedestrians suffer. Advocacy at the very top with some policy tools to take the view of the pedestrians is absolutely essential. Are we just leaving it with this one thought? The fact in Hong Kong, ever since the 1960s, the streets are disappearing. If you look at what a street is called today in Hong Kong, every street is a road. All I knew roads are named roads. They are not named streets anymore because they are not streets because it is all done by Highways Department. So let's change it.

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We need to understand where pedestrian casualties happened. Do they happen mainly on side streets or main streets? This figure shows an analysis with almost 4,000 pedestrian casualties in 2010, you can see that both local streets and main streets account for pedestrian casualties, and for fatalities, the main streets are gaining importance (Figure 39). This means we cannot address pedestrian casualties on local streets alone. We have to deal with the main streets as well.

Session 2: Pedestrian Safety

Safer and Attractive Streets in Hong Kong – the Future Rests on Lower Speed LimitsMr. Julian Kwong Community for Road Safety

Lower speed limit will provide the foundation for many other solutions to work. Today I am going to first explain the rationale for lower speed limit and then also proposed a system which will be most adaptable to the situation in Hong Kong. Our pedestrian casualties and fatalities situation for the last 35 years have been dropping. But still over 35 years, we have had already more than 6,000 pedestrians killed on our road; and more than 200,000 pedestrians injured. There has been a tremendous achievement as you can see from this graph but we do not know the trend (Figure 38). It may keep decreasing or we have reached a standing point. If we want to have much bigger achievements, what can we do? Can we just rely on the current solutions and approaches? Or can we propose more drastic changes?

Figure 38 – pedestrian casualties and fatalities in Hong Kong

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Figure 39 – Casualties and fatalities on local and main streets

Figure 40 – Pedestrian casualties in Tsim Sha Tsui

And that is clear from this picture, showing a block of 5-year data of pedestrian casualties in Tsim Sha Tsui (Figure 40). They are very much spread over the entire urban area. On the main streets, of course it is important but it happens everywhere on the side streets. We cannot easily tackle the problem by only addressing black sites or certain junctions, or by adding a few railings or a few junctions. We have to impose an area-wide solution.

Figure 41 – Pedestrian fatalities in UK and France

Why lower speed limit is crucial? It is illustrated in this slide from the latest figures from the Department of Transport, UK in 2010 and also from Certu France in 2006, if we combine the 2 information, the elderly are the hardest hit. We have 72 pedestrian fatalities in 2011, among this 70% of those are age 60 or above. An elderly hit by a car has a risk of 52% of dying (Figure 41).

A car seeing a pedestrian coming out from the street in front of him will apply the emergency braking. But before applying hard braking, he needs some time to react, and one second is not that much. That means within the first 40m of this braking exercise, actually the speed of the car does not reduce. The pedestrian will be hit still at 50km/h. Only in the last 6m or 7m does the speed really come down and to reduce the probability of someone being killed. But note that

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I am talking about cars. It does not include minibuses or buses or other heavy vehicles. And it is also on dry surface. But how about we reduce the speed to 30km/h. The kinetic energy associated with this speed is much lower. As kinetic energy is proportional to the square of the velocity, that makes the difference. Also the braking distance is much smaller, so that this elderly person on the left probably can go home to enjoy dinner with his family. But the one on the right will have half the chance of dying. Even if he does not die, he will experience very severe injury. How about if we adopt the intermediate speed limit – 40km/h? There is still a great chance of being killed but is much reduced in comparison with the 50km/h. The significance of this is that 50km/h is the default speed limit in our urban areas.

The advantage of lower speed limit is not only on safety. Speed limit and designed speed of streets and roads are closely tied up with the design features, notably in the street alignment, the layout, the materials you can use and the types of street furniture.

Lower speed limit will result in a safer and more tranquil street environment which stimulates walking. You do not like to bring your children or you would not like to advise the elderly in your home to walk on the streets where you know there is fast traffic.

Also, lower speed limit and designed speed can give our designers much more flexibility in laying out the streets. We do not have to rely too much on, for example, certain kerb radius or radius on the inside of the street corner. Lower speed limit is associated with less signs, markings and railings; and there is lesser restriction for passive safety. What does this mean? In a collision, especially on a highway environment, you have to be very careful with every street furniture that in case of loss of control situation, the vehicle occupant will not be severely injured. But in a street environment with 40km/h or less, you can have much more flexibility to have different types of nice and good looking street furniture closer to the kerb. So there is more flexibility for landscaping. Also we wish to see those lower speed limits tied up with heritage conservation.

What exactly is our speed in our streets? In Tsim Sha Tsui, we have done some speed surveys using laser speed guns. These are two small streets, Haiphong Road and Mody Road, they are belong to a group of local distributor roads. The average speed is not very high, in the range of 30km/h or 34km/h. But then there are always people who drive much faster. For this type of street, 47km/h or 49km/h is far too high because pedestrians are crossing here and there. And there is no such need because this driver will have to stop at the next junction or next traffic light. How about the main street, Nathan Road? The average speed is quite favorable, about 40km/h but then we have drivers doing up to almost 70km/h, once they have a chance between slower vehicles.That makes our streets particularly dangerous. As I mentioned earlier, we have to tackle both local streets and main streets. So what are we trying to do with the lower speed limit? The speed of vehicles on the street is never a constant figure. It is always a distribution like this (Figure 42). We have the average speed. We have what we call the 85 per centile speed and also we have the top speed by some of the naughty drivers.

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By adopting a lower speed limit, we try to achieve something like this: we try to push the average speed a bit lower and that will help a lot. But we also want to eliminate grossly excessive speeds. Those are the drivers who contribute to the most significant risks on the streets. Lower speed limit is not only beneficial for pedestrians. We are looking to the benefits for cyclists and for vehicle occupants in case a vehicle collides with another vehicle. Also excessive speed

Figure 42 – Speed distribution

leads to the needs for the emergency braking for buses and that is one of our major concerns that people do fall down inside the bus, and severe injuries can arise.

In Europe and also in many other countries nowadays, lower speed limit is quite common. Just to give you an example of France (Figure 43) – on the right, 50km/h, same as in Hong Kong. To the left, we have the pedestrian zone with no car and that is clear. Then there is something in between called the ‘30km/h zone’ and also to a lesser extent, the 20km/h shared surface. This kind of system is very common in Europe, similar in the UK, Netherland, Germany, Switzerland etc. But they are tied up with legally designed traffic zones with rules. They are not only a kind of concept. In Hong Kong we do not have the 30km/h zone. We do not have the shared surface rule. The criteria for designing this traffick is based on the balance between traffic and neighborhood life.Figure 43 – Speed limit zones in France

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We have another problem on main streets. I mentioned about main streets. We have many main streets with heavy pedestrian activities. Perhaps it’s difficult to reduce the traffic to 30km/h – at least it is not too realistic. Let’s look at some other countries – for example, Scandinavia. But in Scandinavia it is quite common that there is a possibility of having a 40km/h zone, like in Copenhagen. So in this presentation, I am going to propose a new system for Hong Kong, made up of of the 40km/h zone, 30km/h zone and the shared surface at 20km/h, and these signs, I specially designed to show the balance between traffic and pedestrians (Figure 44). This would be most applicable urgently for the dense urban area where most of the pedestrian casualties happen. But this system is not restrictive to our main urban areas. They are relevant for private housing development, housing estates, institutions like universities, hospitals, industrial zones, even country park where pedestrians and traffic mix. And that is the major hope that this new idea can be incorporated into our new development areas, new CBD. That means some of these streets will be purposely designed with these speed limit zones in mind already.

Figure 44 – Low speed limit system for Hong Kong

The 30km/h zone emphasises that pedestrians have a high priority together with traffic and also streetscape. These are the types of streets which would be most suitable for the 30km/h zone concept (Figure 45). The termination of a 30km/h zone is by a sign with a slanting black mark shown on the right, and the entrance is by the sign on the left.

40km/h zone begins with this sign on the left and ends with this sign on the right (Figure 46). This is the type of situation which would qualify for a 40km/h zone, like this district distributor street or even primary district distributor streets where there are very heavy pedestrian cross movements.

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Figure 45 – 30km/h zone Figure 46 – 40km/h zone

But of course, some of our 50km/h streets can retain the current speed limit notably known already with extensive segregation. But that does not mean that we need to encourage construction of all the streets with segregation in our new towns. If they are already equipped with footbridges and subways, and there are few pedestrians with good sitelines, it possibly can retain the existing 50km/h default speed limit.

Shared surface is an exception. Usually it is only applicable to a very small proportion of our urban streets, like markets, shopping streets in Causeway Bay, where pedestrians are already spilling into the streets.

To what extent will this new system benefit? I tried to quote all the 4,000 pedestrian casualties according to the road and street priority to see how they can benefit from it (Figure 47). For the streets, it is almost certain that almost all these streets can be classified as 30km/h streets. But for the local district distributors, there are more that can be classified as 40km/h zone. And for the district distributors, then a lot can be classified under the 40km/h.

Let's look at some examples. Realistically how can we put this system into our urban network, like in Tsim Sha Tsui? This diagram illustrates that the peripheral streets, Salisbury Road, Kowloon Park, are already equipped with footbridges and subways (Figure 48). They can retain 50km/h default speed limit. But then the main roads, main streets, Nathan Road, Austin Road, should ideally be 40km/h. And then the side streets should be 30km/h. But then you may wonder why between Salisbury Road and Kowloon Park drive there is a section of 40km/h? That is very possible because if we want to have this section of street, currently only the subways to be re-provided with surface crossing, then I will very much recommend that this section of street will have 40km/h speed limit together with a drastic change of street character and streetscape.

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Another example Wanchai – the trunk roads are in green (Figure 49). Queensway set as 50km/h is no problem, but main streets within Wanchai area are very heavily used by pedestrians and they have very high casualty toll for pedestrians. My proposal would be that the main section of Queen's Road East will have 40km/h speed limit, same again for Wanchai Road and Hennessy Road because the average traffic speed is moving only around 40km/h anyway. We do not want to have some drivers going excessively fast, like in one of the surveys we did for Queen's Road East. One taxi driver just went 72km/h at 7pm. I think that is grossly inappropriate.

This concept can also be applied to rural communities, like Kam Tin Town (Figure 50). We already have a bypass with 70km/h at the main street. Why can't we make it more attractive with streetscape and at the same time, having a lower speed limit?

Figure 47 – Impact of lower speed limits on pedestrian casualties

Figure 48 – Lower speed limits in Tsim Sha Tsui

Figure 49 - Lower speed limits in Wanchai Figure 50 - Lower speed limits in Kam Tin

To conclude, compared to the existing approach which mainly relies on all kind of warning signs, markings, a lot of "Slow" markings here and there, the new proposal is area-wide. We want area-wide benefits as opposed to isolated reactive treatments. We also want to promote harmony between traffic and pedestrians. We do not want pedestrians to be always at the good will of drivers. But more importantly, we see a mission here. We want to promote a far more positive culture of urban traffic. We want to have civilised urban street environment. We do not want drivers to feel that they always have priority over pedestrians.

Thank you very much.

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The Walkable Urban Environment and Pedestrian ExposureDr. Zhi Ning City University of Hong Kong

Thanks to the organisers for giving me this opportunity, I was actually surprised by the variety of topics presented in this conference. My topic today will be something very different from what Julian just mentioned.

It is the skyline that defines a city. But it is the people who live in the city and we try to live in harmony with the city. Julian just mentioned the pedestrian safety in the streets. I am going to talk about another angle of pedestrian safety – which is health safety. So it is relevant to the exposure – we call it the "Walkable Urban Environment and Pedestrian Exposure".

We know Hong Kong is a very special case with so many people and vehicles. There is a certain uniqueness of our urban environment in Hong Kong. Because of its uniqueness, we have special roadside air quality departments and we also have the very toxic roadside pollutants that can cause harm to our health. Finally I will give a few suggestions or my proposal to solve these roadside exposure problems.

We know Hong Kong is a very small place, about 1,104 km2, and we have a very large population and it continues to grow. Now it is almost 7 million people. If you do a simple math, we have 6,516 people in one single km2, compared with world's average which is only 48. We actually ranked number 4 in the world right after Singapore, Monaco and Macau. So this is a very large number.

At the same time, Julian just mentioned about the streets. I want to mention another important data also about the street and traffic. Right now in Hong Kong, we have over half a million registered vehicles and the total road length is only 1,900km. If you do a simple math here, there are almost 250 vehicles in one single km, and the world average is only 30. We are actually number 1 traffic density in the world. It is a very striking number. We have very high population density, very high traffic density. That is an issue. As a consequence, we know vehicles are already dangerous, in a way that can cause collisions to the pedestrians. Other than that, vehicles emit pollution.

In Hong Kong, the composition of vehicles, I just mentioned over 250 per kilometre. Out of these 250, we have about 1/4, 25% of vehicles run on diesel fuel. And these diesel vehicles, unfortunately, are either trucks or buses and they contribute to over half of total vehicle mileage. This is a very striking fact that we are facing every day in Hong Kong. What is even more striking, just around June 2012, World Health Organisation (WHO) announced the diesel emission. It is classified as Class 1 Carcinogen. It used to be Class 2. The difference between Class 1 and Class 2 is we have very solid scientific evidence to prove the diesel emission can cause lung cancer, respiratory

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problems, etc. So diesel fuel is very dangerous and now is Class 1 Carcinogen. With all of these facts together, we know that people who live in the city, like small city in Hong Kong, are exposed to very high density of vehicles and the pollution from the vehicles.

Let's look at the trend of the historic and major air pollution in Hong Kong situation. I put only 2 categories. One is NOx, nitrogen oxide. The other one is particulate matter (Figure 51). The particles have different sizes. PM10 means size less than 10µm, very small, while the diameter of a human hair is around 80 to 100µm. PM10 is only 1/10 of a hair's diameter, very small. PM2.5 is the size less than 2.5µm. It is even smaller. In the future slides, I will explain why different sizes can matter for human health. Basically, very small size particles can penetrate deeper into our lungs. It is like a Trojan horse. It carries toxic substances and to our exposure.

Figure 51 – Air pollutants emission trend

We can see in history that the particles PM10 gradually decreased because of the introduction of LPG vehicles around year 2000 replacing the diesel vehicles to regulate or to control the particle emission. We can see the decreasing trend for PM10 and also PM2.5 trend but unfortunately in around 2008, we see a slightly increase trend in small particles, even though the Government has put a lot of efforts. We recognize that, to the control of emission. But still we see an increase in trend very unfortunately.

Now even more problematic is NO2, as you can see from this slide here, it is kind of a dangerous pollutant. It can reduce lung growth and function, especially for young children. In the last 20 years, NO2 has been increasing. This is the trend not only in Hong Kong, but also in many cities in Europe. The fundamental reason is with increasing stringent vehicle emission standard, NO2 out of these vehicles emission types, has increased because the new technology has tried to convert its precursor, like NO, into NO2 to control it. So you have increased NO2 at the same time while you see some decreased trend

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of the particles. So with this kind of dilemma here between NOx and particles. This is the history of the roadside air pollution in Hong Kong.

Now I want to come back to our Hong Kong urban environment. I just mentioned our very unqiue environment. What makes it so unique? I want to show a few interesting pictures. First it is the street canyon effect (Figure 52). The meaning of the canyon we know is like a valley between two hills. In a street canyon case in Hong Kong, many districts have very narrow streets and high rise buildings. You can see these representatives photos here, one is in Central and one is in Mongkok. Narrow street can trap the pollution right inside the canyon. Unfortunately we have very high density of traffic. Inside this canyon, when you have the wind above the building, different vehicles emit all kinds of different pollutants. Very unfortunately there is the circulation right inside the canyon. The pollutants are carried from one side to another side of the street. Often it can be trapped in these canyons for a long time. We as pedestrians are going to walk in these streets all the time. You can imagine the pollution trapped inside the street canyon can cause problems for the pedestrians. Another case is about the public transport, the buses. This is the problem most of the people experienced in our daily life. The problem for these passengers will be if you look at the diesel buses lining up to take the passengers, at the same time, the passengers are very close to the tailpipes and it is only within meters away from the tailpipes. It is a problem because we know once the emission comes out of the tailpipes, it is going to disperse and in a way that is right for the people to inhale. This is another problematic issue for the Hong Kong pedestrians. We get on the bus, take public transport every day but at the same time, the vehicle emission is also causing problems for the passengers. On average we have over a million passengers daily and this is a very long term exposure on a daily basis. We are exposed to that almost all through our lives.

Figure 52 – Street crayon effect

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Another one is the sitting out areas. I was making a joke with my son before that the walkability is about the pedestrian safety and here in the sitting out area, it is about sittability. Why is sittability a problem? Because Hong Kong is very tiny. Often for the development, sitting out areas are often put at the roadside. One extreme case is on Nathan Road. It is right between Nathan Road and another busy road where a triangle place is. So the sitting out area is right over there (Figure 53). You can imagine when the diesel traffic and vehicles are passing by, the emission is going to be trapped in the sitting out areas. It’s very dangerous too.

Figure 53 – Sitting out area near Nathan Road

Another aspect for the sitting out areas is about the vulnerable groups. Often if you go out in the city on a weekend, or in the night, the elderly people always like to spend time in the sitting out areas. We classify them as vulnerable group, both for the young kids and the elderly. They suffer more dangers when exposed to the pollutants because of their vulnerability. So for the sitting out areas, we do have some issues like the construction and the building environment. It can cause problems for certain groups of people, and we do not want these vulnerable people to expose to the high concentration of roadside pollutants.

Another one is about the roadside vendors. Hong Kong is a commercial city, as well as tourist city with a lot of different shops, especially in Mongkok and Central with people walking by the street shopping or window shopping. This is also the environment with high concentration of pollutants. For the vendors open for 8 to 10 hours a day, very long time, and they are exposed to the roadside pollution all the time. So we have these different kinds of issues which define Hong Kong as a very unique city in terms of the pedestrian exposure.

I just mentioned so many different kinds of possible safety problems. What is the actual air pollution we are talking about here? One thing is about the particles. The particles are very tiny, sometimes in different shapes. They are actually very small. PM10 and PM2.5 are sizes of less than 10µm and 2.5µm. If you look at our roadside environment, the size will be even smaller and this is a very typical roadside environment in an urban city, next to the busy streets. As you can see from the numbers here, the unit is nanometer. The sixe of the particles that actually expose people right next to the street is actually very small. They are so small but can cause very big problems. Here you can see in this diagram, it defines the different particles – where is it going to stay, where is it going to deposit.

Bigger particles can deposit in our upper respiratory tracts and the relatively small ones in the middle part. Very, very small ones, say

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less than 1µm, are going to come deep into our lungs and this is the deepest part of our lungs. It is a very dangerous part because there is a direct interaction, like gases, particles with our blood. Sometimes when the particles carry toxic substances, like organics or heavy metals, they have direct exchange with our blood.

One interesting experiment we did a few years ago back in Los Angeles. We exposed a minds for a few weeks to the high concentration of roadside pollutants. After 10 weeks, we realised the neuro cells there had diminished by 50%. That is a very striking fact and because of that, this can have interesting implications roadside pollution sometimes can cause memory problems, especially for elderly people. This is a very dangerous part because of the size. The other part of danger comes from its own chemical composition. We know the diesel emission has become a carcinogen. Why is it a carcinogen? It is because particles sometimes can carry different types of pollutants. Heavy metals come from lubricant oil used by vehicles. Sometimes there are toxic organics that come from diesel fuel. They have different benzo(a)pyrene and they have very high electric density right in the sphere area and because of the high electric density, they have very high reactivity (Figure 54). In other words, if they are inhaled, there is a direct exchange of the toxic substances, oxygen and electrons with our blood cells. This is the problem from the diesel particles. They have all kinds of different pollutants – different metals, sulphates, toxins. It is like a Trojan horse. Once inhaled, the toxic substances can be released into our blood. So this is the fundamental reason why we call it the very dangerous pollutants.

The other thing is the gas NO2, nitrogen dioxide. NO2 is a very interesting case too. This is a very interesting smog chamber study which people did a research to simulate NO and NO2, which are the common composition of vehicle emission, to see what would happen after a period of time (Figure 55). For Hong Kong, we are exposed to

Figure 54 – Benzo(a)pyrene structure

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very, very fast exposure and it is very fresh, in a way that once the particle emission comes out of the tailpipes, within 20-30 minutes it comes into our lung. It has direct exposure to the pedestrians. We are exposed to this very dynamic zone, first very high concentration; second the NO2 concentration is very high. NO2 has very high reactivity. In this very fast and fresh emission zone, the concentration is much higher over time. So this is the uniqueness of how we are exposed to pollutants every day.

What are the ways out to help us improve these exposures? There are different buses and trucks in Hong Kong. There is another striking fact that we do not want to face. Even up until last year, we have about 40% of diesel vehicles that have very old emission standard - Euro II and even older. In Singapore, in 2001, the Government banned Euro II and older vehicles in whole Singapore. But after 10 years, Hong Kong still has very old vehicles in the streets. The problem is that Euro II emission standard allows emission of more than 10 times of these pollutants over the newer standard. 40% of diesel vehicles on the road are Euro II or even lower. That can cause huge emission problem as you can do a simple calculation.

Early this year, the Policy Address announced a HKD$10 billion initiative to retrofit vehicles to control the Euro II emission standard. At the same time, there is a plan to introduce electrical buses. Hopefully with this new initiative, we can control to a certain level the roadside pedestrian exposure from dirty vehicles. This is one good aspect.

The other way is that more and more urban cities, especially Europe, have introduced the Low Emission Zone (LEZ). In the LEZ, only certain emission standard vehicles can enter the zone at a certain time of a day. This is the fact that it is the vehicle emission that causes roadside pollution and pedestrian exposure. If you can control the source, try to lower the emission of the entire area for the LEZ, something

Figure 55 – Smog chamber study

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good can happen. Even the London Mayor, Mr. Boris Johnson, has announced that they are going to introduce the "ultra-low" emission zone where by 2020 only zero and low-emission vehicles are allowed in the central London zone. It is a question for us to ask where we should go for Hong Kong to control the vehicle emission, and to help us improve pedestrian exposure.

Easing the Way – Improving Pedestrian Movement on Urban StreetsMr. Neil Adams Formerly Transport for London

Today I will be speak to you about ways and means about improving pedestrian movement in cities. First of all, I must confess, I am a traffic engineer. In my older time, I certainly installed several hundred million km of pedestrian guardrails, lots of new traffic lights and probably pedestrian direct desire lines many times. But things have changed. At Transport for London, I was the Chief Engineer for urban traffic control network corporations. My job was to keep London moving. I was also responsible for vetting new highway schemes under the new Government's regime that we introduced, and also the day to day operation of the London road network.

I am going to talk first about the essential elements for success in any new highway scheme, and then about the few high profile schemes that I worked on in London. Then I will get some technical details of how the new methods we developed, and how appropriate of them for Hong Kong as they were and are in London. The constant theme is the reallocation of road space to pedestrians and to move away from the dominance of road traffic in the urban environment, also to shift away from huge one-way system to traditional urban streets with uncluttered footways. I will also show how these can be achieved without increasing traffic congestion.

The ingredients for a successful urban improvement scheme are many and various, but a driving force is necessary, a driving force that can overcome vested interest and make them see what it is for them. The election comes high on the priority list of politicians, profits for land owners, developers and business, and the more pleasant environment for road users, and for professionals like us, the pleasure of seeing a job well done from conception to completion. Not least, the influence system in UK has been enacted by parliament, the Traffic Management Act 2004 which imposed the network management duty on all highways upgraded, and very specifically defined traffic as including pedestrians. The act required highway operators to ensure that the network operates in the best interest of all road users and moreover, to prove that they are doing so. In this framework, all schemes are vetted rigorously to ensure that benefits are shared and not focused on single interest groups. This required us to engage in new thinking about how we handled highway schemes and specifically about how we provide it for pedestrians, and a new Government framework has

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involved in it. But what is appearing on the screen is other issues that also are important, engineering excellence, design excellence, and accountability.

Oxford Circus is the home of two of the world's greatest shopping streets. It was intensely overcrowded. The problem here was to reduce pedestrian overcrowding without compromising traffic capacity and safety. The design, which was done by my colleagues, was based on a crossing in Tokyo. My job was to guide them through the new approval process and ask them the awkward questions, which I did. The scheme reduced pedestrian congestion by 50% simply by widening footways, removing guardrails (Figure 56). It was neutral on traffic capacity. Footways consist of high quality materials. We used that to fix the surface.Figure 56 – Oxford Circus

In 2009, I and my boss Peter Brown were asked by the Deputy Chairman of Transport for London to consider converting a huge one-way system, Piccadilly (Figure 57), from one-way to two-way operation, and to turn what was a racetrack into a civilised urban street. I did some calculation earlier that later we did a more extensive one, but earlier I did a calculation more or less on the back of a cigarette packet and said yes, it would work, and it was opened recently and does work. The design principle is similar to that of the Oxford Circus, uncluttered and simple. Here is a photograph that I took myself last summer. You will notice a couple of aspects such as shared lighting columns and traffic signal at the right, also note the complete lack of pedestrian guardrail. You may also note the complete lack of pedestrian and traffic. But I took this photo early on a Sunday morning last summer, after a red-eye arrival from Hong Kong.

Going even further in the previous two schemes, Exhibition Road in west London is a true shared space scheme (Figure 58). It is one of the largest done in the UK to date. My role was to ensure the movement of people and goods. Engineers and planners often forget about the movement of goods around the city, which is actually essential for a city to work. It is as important as road traffic and pedestrians, altogether in the mix. My job was to make sure that that was not compromised.

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Figure 57 – Piccadilly Figure 58 – Exhibition Road

These three schemes all in all were costing about HKD$500 million. We have improved chiefly for the benefits of the pedestrians, however at the same time, there was political pressure to smooth traffic flow on London’s roads, when there was a little or no money available for these huge schemes. We were in fact being asked to improve both road traffic and pedestrian congestion at the same time by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson.

I am a traffic signal engineer first and foresmost, and in all of these schemes, traffic signaling was a key element. They control road traffic capacity as well as providing a safer opportunity to cross busy roads. In London, there are 6,000 traffic signals. The Mayor also wanted us in addition to looking at all these new schemes, to review the operation of each of these traffic signals at a rate of 1,000 a year, and use them to both smooth traffic flow and to improve walkability which is a tough call. We actually do a good deal of thinking about how to deliver this and we came under unprecedented press and public scrutiny while the new strategy was being involved and embedded into the business. What came out of it was a new methodology for setting traffic signal timings as well as proposals for developing new technologies that could be used on traffic signals, as well as using the already well recognised existing technology across the network. The new method was tested by the three schemes I just mentioned.

Squaring the circle, dealing with road traffic and pedestrians at the same time, and it is best to keep the two apart which has often been the answer in Hong Kong. Conventionally, traffic engineers to anyone who may asks more and better pedestrians, may give similar answer when talking about upgrade, “We cannot do that. It will increase congestion and will increase pollution”. That is what said in the traffic engineers' handbook, and often it is true.

Traffic flows according to mathematical rules, it’s like fluid mechanic with a bit of human behaviour added to make things a little bit more exciting for the engineers who like things to be planned exactly as he wants. But even without expensive shared space schemes, it is possible to make life better for all road users and to demonstrate it mathematically. Above all, this helps to show that the road network is balanced for all road users, with regular reviews, say every 3 years, keeps any urban network running at peak efficiency. Efficiency is the outcome and I know efficiency is very much valued in Hong Kong. A little engineering judgment is the main input. This is how we did it.

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This is well-trodden ground for traffic engineers.We all know that for a stable network, we need to set our traffic signals so that they’re authorised at and preferably under 90 per cent of saturation. The ideal target is 80 per cent. This provides sufficient resilience to cope with most run-of-the-mill incidents, slow starts and hesitant drivers, or people texting while having one hand on the steering wheel, etc. It also speeds up the clear up of incident, and combined with a traffic responsive system such as SCOOT, which is used in Hong Kong , provides a means with dealing very effectively with day to day, hour to hour, minute to minutefluctuations in traffic demand.

Aside from these fixed aspects, all which are important but much less flexible than signal timings, the main tool for a traffic engineer’s disposal is the traffic signal cycle time. Therefore the first rule that we set was to operate traffic signals of the lowest cycle time compatible with achieving a maximum degree of saturdation of 90 per cent. This is important because when it goes above 90 per cent, the traffic starts to queue back. When it queues back, it is queuing back to upstream junctions and pedestrian crossings. That is when you get the tailpipe exposure upstream. Controlling traffic congestion effectively is as important as providing pedestrian facilities.

People crossing between the traffic queues on Queen's Road Central are crossing within half a meter of the tailpipes. That is not an effective way to manage the network. So the signal cycle time is the main tool. We set the maximum limit at 120 seconds which the Oxford Circus scheme I showed you earlier operates at. That is the towards the high end. We never recommend going above that because it will give very little benefit.

There are other factors than road traffic to be taken into account when designing the traffic signals. The most important of which is pedestrian. We set performance standards for pedestrians at the traffic signals, the same as we did for road traffic. And here are the two, side by side almost. Traffic performance is a traffic light score – red, amber, green. Green is ideal but practically amber, sort of 80 to 90% saturation is more achievable. Above that you will have a problem of persistent congestion.

Then we set the same balanced score approach for pedestrians. Under saturated for pedestrians, all pedestrians waiting to cross the road, clear the kerb during the green man– the invitiation to cross signal. For amber, or at saturation, all pedestrians waiting to cross just clear the kerb during the green man period and no pedestrian overcrowding – that means overcrowding on traffic islands or footways. Over saturated is on the occasions where pedestrians who are passing by, say the back of the footway, cannot get through because of the pedestrians waiting to cross the road. The lower the signal cycle time, the more times per hour the pedestrians get to cross the road. Quite often the case is, to lower the signal cycle time, gives more opportunities to cross and that reduces pedestrian overcrowding.

I’ll give an example. This junction in Central is red for both road traffic and for pedestrians (Figure 59). This is the junction at Queen's Road Central and the junction of Wynham Street and Pedder Street.

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This is lunchtime. The traffic is queued out of sight. It actually queued over several pedestrian crossings almost back to Admiralty and pedestrians are waiting to cross on a narrow footway block the movement of people along the footway. People are trying to squeeze past while people are waiting to cross the road. There is a very simple solution – using traffic signal cycle time alone. One is to reduce the traffic signal cycle time. The other one is to relocate traffic queue. Frequently, as you can see here, traffic is queued across pedestrian crossing. Two problems there as you are exposing pedestrians to vehicles, but it can be easily solved by reducing signal cycle time and relocating the traffic queue upstreet. Here there is a little bit of a downstreet congestion can be solved by a little attention downstreet, but the toolbox for traffic engineers are still not there even though there are very simple measures can be done. The solution is ranged between medium- and low-tech and we have been tried in London successfully.

Figure 59 – Junction in Central

One more thing is pedestrian countdown. I was privileged to be on the development team for this in London. This is the first one we rolled out in front of our headquarters building. It has been widely installed across Asia and in the US, and now it’s growing in London considerably. It gives pedestrians a feeling of protection as they are crossing the road. It also reduces confusion especially because different cities and different countries operate traffic signals in different ways. This gives a feeling of security. Once you start crossing the road, you know you get 20 seconds left to cross or whatever it is to finish your crossing before the traffic will start. In London we did some extensive surveys on this and public approval was 83%. They liked it and it was not expensive either so they liked it even more.

There are also most sophisticated traffic management techniques, such as optimising signals to progress pedestrians through multiple crossings with a minimum of delay. If you are crossing a wide road, you cross one crossing, wait half a minute, cross another one, wait 60 seconds and then you cross the final bit. You can avoid that. The traffic control system used in Hong Kong is very good at that. And can we help to make the streets friendlier?

Low-tech solutions are a forest of sign posts in Kennedy Town. Quit confining pedestrians with unnecessary guardrail, particularly at junctions. We have a research done in the UK by University of Southampton. They have established that taking all guardrails at junctions have no impact on pedestrian safety whatsoever. It also means that they are not confined to a very narrow crossing point.

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Put street signs, road signs and traffic signals on the same column along with lighting columns is a very simple answer. A lot of engineers may say, “You can't do that. How can the guy working on the traffic signals know which current it is this?” These days that is easily resolved. That is no longer an excuse. Cables can be labeled. Separate cutouts can be divided. Going back to the UK traffic management Act I mentioned earlier, the act imposes a duty on all those operating work and how they cooperate. So that the different agencies putting up different signs, traffic signals, street lighting, tram columns, whatever, are obliged to cooperate, which is good, and actually reduces that sort of overcrowding that you might see there.

I want to finish with my favorite two pieces of guardrail I spotted in Hong Kong (Figure 60). The one on the left is on Wellington Street. You would certainly not get a wheelchair through there. Even the slim lady is having to squeeze herself through. It is ridiculous. The one on the right is a very small piece of guardrail which can serve no useful purpose, whatsoever.

Thank you for your time.

Figure 60 – Rails in Hong Kong

Chair ResponseMr. Cameron MacDonald Atkins China Ltd.

Neil’s work on the Oxford Circus junction in London is a project that my colleagues at Atkins were also involved in. It is a project that features extensively in the Atkins marketing collateral, not just because it’s in a very iconic part of London, but because it was a project that was so successful in readdressing the balance of needs of pedestrians and vehicular traffic, and a project that so successfully improved the pedestrian conditions at that location.

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I’m going to ask our three speakers to join me again at the front here and as they make their way up, I want to provide some extra wider context to the conference today and this particular session on pedestrian safety.

It’s no coincidence that this week is UN Global Safety Week. It’s a week that’s been proceeded by the publication by World Health Organisation and partners of a good practice guide to Pedestrian Safety: A Road Safety Manual for Decision Makers and Practitioners, and this draws on the work they did for the Global Status Report on road safety for 2013 and follows in the footsteps of the OECD report: Pedestrian Safety, Urban Space and Health, that was produced towards the end of last year. So there is an enormous amount of documentation available that tells the story of pedestrian safety at the moment and offers some guidance on how we can improve issues going forward.

These issues are underlined by a number of facts: the staggering statistic that over 270,000 pedestrians died on the roads last year and this accounts for nearly one quarter of all road deaths. This proportion actually varies by region, Southeast Asia proportion is just over 10 per cent whereas in some countries such as Korea and Japan and some African countries, that proportion is close to 40 per cent. And of course there is the very true fact that road pedestrian deaths are sudden, violent and unexpected with significant emotional consequences as a result.

The risk factors are numerous. We heard from Julian on vehicle speed, drivers’ behaviour which is exacerbated by drinking, and in more recent times mobile phone use, human error, road infrastructure design, inadequate enforcement and visibility. But the best practice is not advising us to stop walking to eliminate these risks. We should be putting better measures to protect pedestrians and this will bring multiple benefits, not just safety benefits but also health benefits as we’ve already heard, environmental benefits because more people are walking and not using motorised transport, and finally of course community benefits because pedestrians tend to congregate together in a way motorists cannot.

Safe walking framework, within the WHO Best Practices, seeks to enforce new and existing laws: infrastructure design that seeks to segregate and not only segregate but also to lower speeds, improve visibility, seek more pedestrian zones in city centres, vehicle design to reduce impact on the pedestrians and enhanced trauma care systems. What about Hong Kong? We’ve seen from Julian these two graphs already and they show an encouraging trend of reduced accidents and numbers killed. And as I was listening to the presentations just now, it struck me that there was a common thread running through each of the things – it struck me that Julian’s safest streets with lower speeds and calm traffic were the same streets that Dr. Ning would have reduced air pollution and of course the very same streets that Neil would see improve pedestrian movement and safety.

As I wandered around Tsim Sha Tsui yesterday, close to my workplace, I noted that Tsim Sha Tsui has an interesting mixture of a lot of elements that we have already seen this morning (Figure 61). On the

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left hand side is full segregation of the pedestrian subway network, a rather drab and dreary pedestrian network. Next to that we see Haiphong Road with lovely trees. Haiphong Road has been responding very well over the years to traffic calming and more space given over to pedestrian movement. On far right is full pedestrianisation at Centenary Square over in East Tsim Sha Tsui. Finally the bottom left is probably one of my favorites examples of poor pedestrian planning in Tsim Sha Tsui. For those who are not familiar with this particular location, this is Kowloon Park Drive. So strong is the pedestrian desire line at this location to cross at grade, that despite the very best efforts of the Highways Department to put three lines of barriers in the way, there is still the additional need to give all sorts of signs warning pedestrians not to cross and directing them down the alternative subway crossing. Now I don’t know what the traffic implications would be of putting an at-grade crossing at this location, but judging from the amount of infrastructure required to affect pedestrian safety here, it would seem that there’s a better solution.

OK, enough talking from me. I am going to ask you now to pose some questions to our panelists.

Question & Answer SessionMr. Oren Tatcher:

Very interesting set of presentations. I just have a couple of quick questions about traffic signals, which is directed to the person who gave us a very interesting presentation on that, which is Neil. Two questions. One, as a traffic engineer, I am very curious about your view on what to me, seems like huge inefficiency in moments of imbalance between the saturation on road and saturation on the sidewalk. My own personal solution to that is jaywalking. I’m wondering, and I think, yes I am helping the public even though everyone looks at me like I’m a criminal, I do think that if everyone jaywalked, it might restore some balance. But I’m really interested to know the engineering view on jaywalking. That’s number one. And number two: anecdotal observation in Hong Kong and some degree

Figure 61 – Features in Tsim Sha Tsui

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elsewhere tells me that the bigger the plots, the wider the roads – by the plots I mean the parcels being developed or surrounded by roads – the longer the signal cycle. Is that because our engineers are lazy in new areas where we have wider roads or is that something that’s part of the law of physics of traffic signals?

Mr. Neil Adams:

Yes, traffic follows mathematical rules. But what has come to the floor in most recent years is actually psychology and that is the understanding of behaviour of people on how they use the road, both drivers and pedestrians. Of course that differs around the world. For instance, in Berlin, people wait at the traffic light for 60 seconds for the green man to come up. There is not a vehicle within 300m. In London, you will not see that because people jaywalk. In Hong Kong there is a mixture of behaviours. Under saturated traffic signals – pedestrians will wait and think "what am I waiting for" and they will want to cross. Ideally the signal setting should change 6 or 7 times a day to accommodate that, so that you do not have to wait too long. But I think there are only so many engineers available in Hong Kong to do that. So in Hong Kong, it is a function of political will to get something done better, resources, and also training of good engineers.

Training of engineers does not mean, with a great respect to traffic models, that they stick their heads to the computer screen. They should get out to the streets and understand how people move around the city and particularly how they behave. The traffic engineers’ eyes are his or her best tool and if they get out and about, then they will understand that sort of situation and be able to do something about it, if they are given the power to interfere.

Signal cycle is again a function of mathematics. The bigger the highway, the more traffic it can accommodate and therefore, the longer the cycle time is likely to be because they need to get more traffic through at the same degree of saturation.

Question:

I am teaching traffic engineers to design signals at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. We never design signals for pedestrian flow, as you know, we design signals for vehicular flow. Only when the pedestrians reach nearly a massive flow, we will have a total pedestrian phasing which means that in Central, many signals will give a total green for all directions. You have to justify with the pedestrian flows. You are talking about the length of the cycle, unfortunately again we look at the vehicular flow. Most of the time when it is peak for the vehicular flow, it also would be peak for pedestrian flow, especially in the morning peak and afternoon peak. In lunchtime, yes we change the setting every day at least 6 to 8 settings, and sometimes it is traffic flow responsive setting. We have the Transport Planning Design Manual and we train engineers to work according to the manual. I think it is probably copied from the UK, put together 20 years ago. Unless the Transport Department is willing to change that to design for pedestrian flow at the junctions as well, at the moment we just justify the width of the crossing. The only thing we would do is according to the width of the crossing but for most traffic signals,

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we just compress the pedestrians to move without obstructing the traffic. If the road is very wide, usually there will be a central reserve and you would need to wait in the middle in line with the traffic flow. It means that when the traffic does not flow, then you cross a little bit; when the traffic flows, then you have to stop and that is the sort of setting at the moment.

Unless the design changes and we train the engineers according to what we have found, we cannot train them to do something outside the scope. Although we do mention that particular spot when we ask them to design the signals, particularly I would ask them to pay very strong attention to pedestrian crossing.

Question:

What we all hear again and again is "I can't do anything unless Government has a vision or takes control". As a consultant in this town, and I have been trying to adopt a lot of these ideas from London for years and I am aware of the health aspects and I think we all are. We cannot, at a grassroots and consultant level, get things changed in Hong Kong. We got to have a Government to take this on. We got to have Transport Department and Highways take this on. And I think the thing with London, is we had Boris Johnson with a vision. So I suppose my question is, can we do it without somebody at the top with a vision? Do you think it is possible? Could the health and safety of our citizens be enough of a motivating factor get somebody senior in our Government the endorsement to make this a number one public issue? Otherwise we’re going to go around and around saying the same things here, and we have been doing this for 10 years already. So sorry that’s not a question, it’s a statement, but thank you for those.

Question:

Julian, you took the approach of defining the realignment of the streets by speed limits. Not quite sure if that was just a cipher for change nature of the streets, ie. removal of the priority of motor vehicles over pedestrians. Would you take that approach based on speed, because you thought that was the driver of change or would we be better looking at the prioritisation and the psychology of motor vehicles coming first, instead of the driver?

Mr. Julian Kwong:

The whole concept of lower speed limit for urban streets, not for highways, is that we want to shift the balance between pedestrians and motorists. Certainly we also need to create the right street environment. We want to adopt specific street characters, say for 40km/h street, and also specific streetscape for 30km/h zone, but that would take a lot of time. We cannot wait until we install all these changes – traffic-calming measures like speed tables, gateways, we have many of these but we cannot make them within, say 20 or 30 years. But we cannot wait. So it is the first step that we just build up the system, educate the road users, and then have the zoning signs set up, together with the removal of some other useless signs. We do not want to have the whole street filled up with signs. We have the

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zoning signs only at the beginning. That will be a long term vision but we need to make a start, not only to traffic calm a few streets and the main centres, but we want to do it on an area-wide basis.

Question:

I am very concerned about our environmental impact arising from the traffic flow. We have Hong Kong Planning Standard and Guidelines, which provides protection to pedestrians and neighborhood, particularly on traffic pollution. But the Government does not really follow the guidelines. What do you think, particularly in Kowloon West, like Yau Ma Tei? We’re living in Prosperous Garden and we have over 10 highways and flyover interchange before our house. This is very poisonous and the noise has exceeded 70dB, very high, even around 80, and we can smell the emission from the cars. Government does not do anything and they still install another large traffic emission, the Central Kowloon Route, without any protection. What do you think? What can we do to ask the Government to protect our lives under that situation? The problem that you have said is that Government will introduce the initiative such as the low emission zone. The problem is that they divert all the vehicles onto the Western Highways and that makes our place become over concentrated and over saturated. What can we do in this situation? How to enforce the situation?

Dr. Zhi Ning:

This is a general question I often face when I talk to different people. There is a very sensitive relationship here between the Government and the general public. And I think there is a very interesting interaction here. As a general public, there is a serious concern for the environmental safety for people living in different districts and in your case, even overhead highways. Often times, in other cases, people live in buildings next to the streets. So your question will be what Government can do. I have an additional question: what other people can do, in this interaction between the general public and the Government?

One thing is what research can do. As a scientist and engineer, what we can do is to provide scientific evidence to emphasise the importance of protection. A very interesting example is in 2006, a study was done in Los Angeles. This study proved that air pollution can disperse within 150m away from the freeway. Because this is a research finding, the government now regulates that all the new schools cannot be built within 150m away from the freeway. That is how science can help the government to guide the future policymaking. There is an interesting interaction between the public and the government. And in between, we hope the research can help, like what Civic Exchange does as a non-profit organisation, to inform the Government the importance of the work and also to assure the public that this can protect them through the new policymaking.

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Lunch Forum

Co-hosted with SOW Ideas Company Limited

Guest Speaker: Dr. Wing-tat Hung Moderator: Mr. Vincent Wong

Videos recording can be viewed at: http://www.civic-exchange.org/wp/walkability_en/

Credit: EKEO

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Session 3: Streets as Public Space

Making Walkable Places in Kowloon EastMr. Raymond Lee Energizing Kowloon East Office, Development Bureau

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the organisers for bringing in so many experts to share with us your experiences in this very important area.

For us, this conference has come in a very timely manner as we have been in EKEO trying very hard in making places, in particular, walkable places in Kowloon East. I am sure my colleagues and I will learn a lot from the very informative experiences of the speakers. I will try to share with you our ongoing efforts in making places in Kowloon East, the challenges that we are facing and also the directions in which we are concentrating our efforts.

I would like to give you a little background on the Energizing Kowloon East Initiatives, before I share with you our ongoing efforts in making places in Kowloon East. This is a diagram showing the local and regional context of Kowloon East (Figure 62). We are in fact only 20 minutes away from Central, the airport is only 45 minutes from us, and within an hour, we will be in Shenzhen.

Our area covers the Kai Tak new development area as well as the Kowloon Bay and Kwun Tong Business area (Figure 63). While the Kai Tak development area is being progressively implemented according to the agreed development plan, our efforts are mostly nowadays concentrated in the old area of Kowloon Bay or Kwun Tong.

The EKEO starts off based on the need to identify the steady and adequate supply of office floor space to sustain Hong Kong’s long-term economic development. This diagram shows that from Year 2000 to 2010, there has only been a very modest increase of office supply in the traditional CBD (Figure 64). During the same period, the office supply in Kwun Tong and Kowloon Bay has increased from roughly 400,000m2 to 1,400,000m2. Looking ahead, in the next 20 years,

Figure 62 – Location of Kowloon East Figure 63 – Kowloon East covered area

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although there will still be some sort of increase of office supply in the traditional CBD, the Kwun Tong and Kowloon Bay area has a potential of supplying an additional of about 4,000,000m2 of office floor space. This is basically the background on why we are having this EKEO office which was set up in June 2012 to facilitate the transformation process of Kwun Tong and Kowloon Bay area into a more business type of area.

Figure 64 – Office supply in Kowloon east

Our vision is to transform the Kowloon East area into another core business district of Hong Kong, to be a place where people would like to work and do business, as well as a place to walk, stay and play on. When our office was set up in June 2012, we published a conceptual master plan. This conceptual master plan provides a framework to guide all of our actions. It is not a detailed blueprint. It is in fact living documents that will evolve over time to take account of the progress of our work as well as the changing needs and aspiration of the community. However, the 4 core values of the conceptual master plan, that is enhancing connectivity, branding, design and diversity, will remain consistent in applying all our guiding actions.

In this conceptual master plan – we call it Version 2.0 – we have come up with 10 major tasks. All these 10 major tasks are divided into the 3 main areas of enhancing connectivity of the area, improving the area’s environment as well as releasing the development potential. Today is not the occasion for me to explain the details of our conceptual master plan. However if any one is interested, I encourage you to visit our website. In addition, you are also welcome to contact us for any more information. So going back to the subject of today’s conference – we consider that by making walkable places in Kowloon East, we would be able to enhance the connectivity, as well as to improve the environment with good design and catering for the diverse needs of different stakeholders and pedestrians.

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So let’s begin by looking at whether Kowloon East is walkable or not. For many people, it may be the first time you are in this part of the town and you may not be very familiar with what the area is like. But for those who are familiar with this area, you are certainly aware that the current situation needs to be much more desirable.

Just to give you an idea of this area is like, I will show you a video clip on typical junctions within this area. You can see vehicles and pedestrians come and go, come and go. Just a few more photos to let you see what the pedestrian environment is like in this district. We have very busy pedestrian and vehicular traffic, a little bit more congested vehicular and pedestrian traffic situation, double parking, on-street loading and unloading activities – these all are really common scenes within this area. The lack of the loading and unloading facilities, the lack of pedestrian crossing facilities, and also the vehicular and pedestrian conflicts in this area are really making it one of the worst walking environments in Hong Kong.

However, we have to realise that these sort of problems do not just pop up overnight. Kwun Tong use to be Hong Kong’s main manufacturing centre. Its development really commenced in the 1950s through various stages of reclamations and the standard of design provision of necessary infrastructure facilities was based on the requirements of that time. This is a plan showing the different stages of reclamations (Figure 65). The first phase starts from the lower corner. This is Kwun Tong Road and this is the edge of the Kwun Tong industrial area and the King Yip Street. It is progressively starts from this side, going towards the western side of the area.

Figure 65 – Reclamation phases in Kowloon East

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This next photograph I’m going to show you is the scene of this area in 1961, probably before many of you were born. I was lucky enough to be in this world then. This area had relatively narrow pavements and very few greening and landscaping facilities. This is another scene of 1966 and by then, more or less the entire industrial district had already taken shape (Figure 66). Within there, we had narrow pavements, very little greenery, probably no landscaping facilities, and off-street loading facilities are also missing in many of the older industrial buildings we have around here nowadays. The lack of this type of supporting facilities might not have been a problem back in the 1960s and 1970s when other facilities within this area already served the various needs of the industrial factories very well, because at that time Kwun Tong was one of the most important manufacturing bases of Hong Kong. They produced over 1/5 of the GDP from the manufacturing sector.

Figure 66 – Kowloon East in 1960s

However, as the area is being transformed to a more business oriented area, the problem, as shown to you earlier, that the pedestrians and the vehicles are fighting with each other for spaces within this area, has become more apparent. It is important for us to understand the nature of this problem and that we are dealing with a problem that is in fact the legacy of the past success of Hong Kong. But the town has already changed and we must move on and manage this urban transformation process. Understanding the nature of this problem has enabled us to realise that there would not be a single and simple solution to this issue. We are progressively adopting a place-making approach in addressing this issue and embracing both short-term and long-term measures to facilitate the transformation process of Kowloon East.

In consistent with EKEO’s working style, we start off by looking for simple, easy to implement and effective, quick win solutions. We have formed an interdepartmental traffic focus group and this focus group is under the lead and steer of my very, very capable deputy head. She has made very good use of a soft and feminine touch in convincing all our macho and masculine departmental workers and colleagues in agreeing to undertake lots of quick-win measures. The essence of the information of the traffic focus group is, we have investigated and implemented a large number of short-term improvement measures,

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include widening footpaths, improving traffic signals, similar to what Neil has discussed with us before lunch. We have also tried to improve pedestrian crossing facilities and remove or relocate some of the obstructions on pedestrian pavements.

Amongst various works, we have implemented 12 traffic improvement works. We have provided 37 directional signs to enhance the connections between the MTR stations and the waterfront, and 41 existing road junctions with improvement works that have already been undertaking within this area. This photo shows you some of the improvement works with the support of concerned departments, including Transport and Highways Department. Pedestrian crossings have been widened and pedestrian signals have been added, as well as optimised traffic signaling to enable a more smooth flow of pedestrians throughout the area (Figure 67).

Figure 67 – Traffic improvement works in East Kowloon

In addition to that, to add more lively and artistic elements to our streets, we have convinced certain concerned Government departments to allow us to partner with local artists to put their artworks on the control boxes around town (Figure 68).

Other than this, we have also been able to do a little more greening (Figure 69). We planted roughly 28 new trees, over 5,000 new scrubs and an additional 250m long roadside planting. We will continue to look for opportunities of similar greening measures because although they may be small in scale, we believe that their accumulative effects will have a positive impact to the quality of our urban environment.

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Figure 68 – Art work on control boxes in Kowloon East

Figure 69 – Urban greening in Kowloon East

In addition to the quick-win measures, we have also commissioned a pedestrian connectivity study in Kowloon Bay. The consultants have been commissioned in February 2013 and we are about to commence the first stage engagement, maybe this month [May]. The main strategy that we adopt in this pedestrian study is to enhance the walkability and encourage people to walk within the area, also to improve the traffic, such that the congestion and conflicts with pedestrians can be minimised. We are also going to facelift the pedestrian environment so that people will find it more comfortable and enjoyable to walk along the streets in Kowloon Bay.

Regarding the short-term measures, some of you may have experienced the congestion problem on the footbridges that we have coming out from Kowloon Bay MTR station in the morning, trying to gain access to the Kowloon Bay business area. This is a photo taken of the very congested footbridges. We have instructed the consultant helping us to identify solutions to divert people to other routes in order to gain access to the Kowloon Bay business area, ahead of the completion of the study.

In terms of the overall strategies, we will first put emphasis in improving the walkabiity and improving the environment of the at-grade level before we move on to examining whether there is a requirement for any grade-separated connections. Other than that, we have also appointed traffic consultants to examine how we can improve walkability in the Hoi Bun Road area. We would like to enhance the pedestrian connectivity at the waterfront through the existing Hoi Bun Road Park. The consultants will carry out a detailed traffic assessment to ascertain whether of our proposal in traffic’s term will be possible.

Two other place-making projects we have undertaken. The Tsun Yip Street Playground is located right in the middle of Kwun Tong. It is currently occupied by concrete soccer field and basketball court, and a hard metal frame all around the open space. This facility served the factory workers as well before but now the area is being progressively changed in to a more business area. It may not be the best type of facilities for the white-collar workers. We have undertaken an experiment that we call the Playful Thursday Event. We partnered with the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department from October 2012 to January 2013, to bring in organic farmers from the New

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Territories for them to sell their organic products. We have also invited local artists to come and perform for 12 consecutive weeks on every Thursday (Figure 70). The intention we have is to see whether we can change people’s perception in making use of this public space. The result is very encouraging. Over 42,000 people attended this event and on average, every Thursday over 3,000 people attended.

Figure 70 – Place-making project in Tsun Yip Street Playground

This has pointed us to proceed with the face-lifting proposal to the playground by providing more greening and facilities more suitable for the business environment of the area. This are the existing facilities of the playground. This is the preliminary design drawing we have for the facelifting proposal. We have already received support from the District Council for this project and we are proceeding with it. Phase I work has already commenced in January 2013 by removing all the heavy metal fences that once segregated pedestrian pavements from the playground. Phase II work for converting the entire playground is targeted to commence in 2014 and will be completed by 2016/17.

Another place-making project – on the topside we have is the scene that you saw in June 2012 and on the bottom picture is January 2013 (Figure 71). We have roughly taken 6 months to turn this area around and open it up for public use. Many events have already been taken place in this venue and looking ahead, there are also other sites underneath the flyovers. We will continue to examine the possibility of making this site available for arts and cultural activities.

I’m moving to the last part of my presentation – it is to share with you what sort of challenges we are facing. We are a very, very young organisation. We are exactly a month away from being 1 year old. During the last 11 months, we have been trying hard to establish ourselves in getting prepared for the challenges lying ahead of us.

Based on the limited experience we have, we consider our main challenge to be the high volume of traffic of pedestrians and vehicles that we have in this area. It is already difficult enough for the existing infrastructure and public facilities to cope with this amount of traffic and with the progressive transformation of the area, the problem will only be more accrued. Yet we have very limited amount of space to maneuver. Unlike the Kwun Tong Town Centre Redevelopment Project, in which wholesale resumption was undertaking and all existing

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buildings were being replaced by new ones, the transformation process of Kwun Tong and Kowloon Bay is going to be more organic and will extend over a long period of time.

Let us take Hung To Road, which is just one block behind here, as an example. The road is designed for 3 lanes of moving traffic. However, it is not uncommon to find that only one lane is available for moving traffic. The other 2 lanes are often occupied by illegal parking, and on-street loading and unloading activities (Figure 72). In fact the traffic problem at Hung To Road is not so much a traffic design issue, but more a traffic-and-street management. Some may suggest that this problem can easily be resolved by stepping up enforcement by the police. However, we have to be mindful that there are over 25,000 business establishments operating in this area and many of them are operating in buildings without off-street loading and unloading facilities. If all on-street loading and unloading are to be banned, it will have severe impact on the smooth operation of the small and medium enterprises. We think that the problem cannot be resolved by just stepping up enforcement by police, although we agree that suitable strengthening is required.

Figure 72 – Hung To Road traffic

Figure 71 – Place-making project in Fly the Flyover Operation

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In addition to the liaison with the police on necessary strengthening of enforcement actions, we have been cultivating partnerships with land owners and estate management firms in the area to solicit their support in adopting better management practices in improving the on-street loading and unloading activities. For example, we have encouraged them to better coordinate the timing of goods delivery with each other in. It has not been an easy process and we have not been able to make any real improvement so far. But we are working on it.

In conclusion, I really hope that next time when we meet again, I will be able to show you something more successful. These are some of the pictures we have taken very recently in this area. The toilet stands on the street are not there to meet your occasional needs after a good curry meal (Figure 73). Their presence is really due to a combination of different factors, including the long established perception of how public space is used in this area, as well as insufficient enforcement from the relevant public authorities. It seems to us that purely working on the hardware measures will not help us in make walkable places in Kowloon East. We will continue our efforts in taking care of the software measures as well and we believe that we can make Kowloon East a better place to walk, a better place for people to stay and work. We will be able to attract talents and investment, and we will be able to conglomerate people, provide business opportunities and make Kowloon East an attractive alternative core business area of Hong Kong.

Thank you very much.

Figure 73 – Goods lying on streets in Kowloon East

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Figure 74 – The Link’s retail facilities location

Revitalising Public Spaces: The Tai Yuen ExperienceDr. Calvin Kwan The Link Management Limited

First of all, before I begin, I just wanted to let you guys know, that the Link's office is at 100 How Ming Street. So Raymond, I need to tell you that I have absolutely seen the progress you guys have made. The traffic is a lot better. Walking around – there’s certainly progress there. There is still a lot of work to go but certainly we appreciate the work you guys have done. I am looking forward to seeing that the Park in front of Kowloon East developed.

As I have mentioned, I’m with The Link Management. Before I begin, I want to give you an overview of The Link. Many of you have probably heard of what we do. We were listed in Hong Kong in 2005 but more importantly, I would like to emphasise the fact that we are 100% owned by institutions and private investors. The Government does not have a stake in The Link. The other thing that I want to emphasize is that we have about 182 properties with a total of IFA of 11 million m2 feet throughout Hong Kong. That means we have about 9% of all of Hong Kong retail facilities, and we’re located mainly at housing estates, so we are also very close to the community, pretty much a major part of Hong Kong.

This is a map of where our offices are located (Figure 74). We are very close to the MTR stations and the railways, very dense population, and we do play a very key role in terms of walkability. A lot of people pass our shops in the centres, go through our areas every day, either to shop or to get to transportation. We are part of their lives.

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I’m going to explain a little about how we do business at The Link. It is the actually part of how we do some initiatives that I’ll show you in the next few slides. First of all, our business is driven around our sustainability initiatives. Over here you can see we have 7 different aspects that we have identified and these are the core areas that we feel we need to make sure that we excel in (Figure 75).

Figure 75 – The Link’s sustainability framework

Our business model does asset management, property management, nothing new or out of ordinary there, but we also do asset enhancement and asset development. So revitalisation – that’s the key initiative we are working on. Some of the properties we work on, namely Lok Fu, Stanley Plaza, Lung Cheung and Wong Tai Sin. We also look at asset investments. Our vision is to become a world class real estate investor and manage serving and improving the lives of those around us. The key there is improving lives of those around us. Therefore we believe that sustainability is good for those around and hence, good for our own business. Of the seven aspects, we also have the key targets and objectives for each of those aspects, what to achieve, how can we move forward, when we figure out how to develop our business (Figure 76).

Figure 76 – The Link’s business model

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Wet markets or fresh markets have always been integral part of Hong Kong. That is where we communicate, where people meet up, purchase daily goods, meet friends, meet neighbors, and do business. This is a picture of the late 1890s in the Central wet market. We progress to the 1950s – another fresh market in Kowloon City mainly on the street. Jump into around 1970s, you can see another picture of the wet market over Ping Shek. 1980s: another one over Pei Ho Street. Wet markets have evolved over the last almost 100 years and it still remains a very key part of our community. So what I want to show you now is something more recent – fresh markets of today that look the same as what it did in the 1980s (Figure 77). There are a few adjustments, not much. In general, the concept of wet market has not changed much. That is one of the key challenges we have at The Link. We have about 95 wet markets that we have to work with.

One thing we like to discuss, or that I like to joke about is – when we look at wet markets, what do you think of? What are the words you first start thinking of? Dirty, dingy, wet, smelly, unhygienic, I don’t want to go there, I’d rather go to a supermarket in shopping centre. That is the public perception and it is fair to say that is pretty accurate in most cases. But we also have 95 of these wet markets in our portfolio. From a business perspective, that is a risk if people do not want to do business or even to a wet market.

So we started off a new process, the Tai Yuen experience. Tai Yuen is the first wet market to undergo a renovation or revitalisation process. I’m going to show you a quick video about the background of Tai Yuen, and also what we did. This is our new design for Tai Yuen Wet Market (Figure 78).

Figure 77 – Wet markets in Hong Kong

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Figure 78 – New design for Tai Yuen Wet Market

Some facts and figures about Tai Yuen Wet Market – the area serves approximately 300,000 residents around the Tai Po community. The objective of our renovation, first, is to offer the community a more pleasant shopping experience; second, is to preserve a little bit of Hong Kong Chinese traditions and culture. Before this programme, we actually did a stakeholder engagement exercise to find out what the current tenants think of the wet market, what did they want to improve, what did they not like, as the tenancy rate was quite low.

People stop going to the wet market simply for the reasons like the hygiene and environmental type of issues, but it took about 2 years to do a complete stakeholder engagement. It was not enough for us to just find out what people here want to do. We actually went around the world to find out what other cities do. A good kind of analogy is to think about if someone asks you out on a date, and he says, “Let’s take you to a wet market in Hong Kong.” How would you feel? Probably not very attracted to that idea. But if you do it in a western city, say Toronto or San Francisco, and somebody asks you out on a date to go to a wet market, fresh market, or a farmers market, it is actually a very common place. The concept is how we can make a fresh market in Hong Kong a place where people would want to go and feel happy going there. That was part of the scoping exercise we did in the stakeholder engagement. We went around to find out what other people did. We totally budgeted around HKD$95 million. Renovation started in June 2010 and finished around 2011.

The biggest change to the wet market itself was looking at the layout (Figure 79). If you look on the left, this is the typical layout of any wet market in Hong Kong. Straight corridors, stalls are all about the same size, not much different; on the right hand side is the new layout at the Tai Yuen Wet Market. If you stand at any junction or any part of the corridor, you can see the storefront of every single stall down that alley or down that way. The purpose of that is it helps our tenants do better business because customers can see what is down each street or each corridor. The stall fronts are actually wider now. You do not have that simple square design. Everyone has the same length of storefront,

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with different angles to promote more area for people to display their products.

Figure 79 – New layout for Tai Yuen Wet Market

What we want to do is to design a wet market for the new century. These are pictures of what it was before. Again, common scenes you don’t see. Now we have wider corridors, opened and uncluttered shop fronts. The floor is now no longer wet. That is why we now call them “fresh” markets, as opposed to “wet” markets. A lot of thought was been put into this, simply because, similar to the theme of this conference, to access walkability, one common problem with wet market is that when you buy grocery, with a lot of people pushing a cart, it is difficult to get around and push through the crowd and everybody buys goods at the same time. What we did was we actually widened the corridors. It helps out with the trolleys that people push but more importantly, it actually makes it easier for people with disabilities or wheelchair users to access the facilities. A wheelchair in a wet market is not very common but you can see them in Tai Yuen wet market. We actually have spent quite a bit of time and money, and efforts in making sure that this is very barrier-free and accessible.

On the exterior side, it looks a little bit different (Figure 80). Actually on the right hand side pictures, these are the “after” photos. There are actually more barrier-free facilities available in these areas.

I mentioned earlier our wet market initiative is not necessary just to improve the interior. It is not just about making it better, but going beyond the design. What other features and quality did we add to these wet markets? Tai Yuen wet market is probably the first wet market in Hong Kong to have a cooking studio installed (Figure 81). You go to the wet market to buy food, but what if you do not know what to cook that day. We installed a cooking studio so that shoppers can find new dishes. We introduce the best, finest ingredients for that day, and we have cooking classes hosted by celebrity chefs.

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Figure 80 – Exterior of Tai Yuen wet market Figure 81 – Cooking studio at Tai Yuen wet market

Figure 82 – Tai Yuen Ambassadors Figure 83 – Rooftop initiatives at Tai Yuen wet market

We have actually helped sustain tenant businesses, not only are we providing a better environment for them to do businesses, but we’re actually also helping the businesses be passed down to younger people. We do have tenants who have now passed their business down onto their children and business sustains for the young generation. Younger generation is taking over the family business and helping out the wet market to develop, and making it a better environment. Businesses are expanding as well.

We also work on enhancing the community. In these pictures and in the video, you can see that we have a program called the Tai Yuen Ambassadors (Figure 82). We actually hire local people who live in that area, give them a job for few days a week. They are all part-time but they understand what is going on around the area. More importantly, they know people in that area. When shoppers come to the wet market, they feel as if it is a community. That is what we are trying to develop, a more community-type feel.

We’ve also worked on different greening initiatives. One of the biggest public spaces that we have are the rooftops of our shopping centres or the rooftop areas and the open areas underneath Housing Authority places. Usually those are flat, concrete terraces or areas with nothing on it, not very aesthetically pleasing, not very fun to walk around. What we have actually done at Tai Yuen is that we installed a rooftop garden. We have also installed a playground for children as well (Figure 83). These have both the more community and environmental type of initiatives.

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How do we measure success? Because this is the first revitalisation of a wet market in our portfolio, it is difficult to measure success. We did not know what would happen. But we found out after we have done this, most stall owners have reported increased sales turnover and they have also employed additional staff. The number of daily shoppers has doubled. Local residents are being drawn towards the wet market simply because it is cleaner and more hygienic, it’s more friendly, and it is more accessible. We were the winner of the Environmental Excellence Awards for the Asian CSR Awards 2011. That shows that we are on the right track. This is the first of hopefully many wet market revitalisation projects.

So finally, moving forward, what are we going to do with this? We are going to continue to refine the Fresh Market revitalisation process. We will find out other ways to improve what we have already improved and bring this to other shopping centres and other wet market stalls in Hong Kong. We are also looking into ways to collaborate with other partners because during the wet market concept or the revitalisation process, we did a lot of that, like the design, working with the architects and so forth, but we want to get more opinions from the community. What do you want to see? How else can we improve the design? And we will go from there. We are looking to ways to work with universities, maybe the School of Architecture or the Hong Kong Design Institute to see what other possibilities we can have.

Let’s Reclaim Our Streets!Mr. Gavin Coates Landscape Architect

First, what is the problem with our streets? Since arriving in Hong Kong about 30 years ago, it goes without saying that much has changed. You could enjoy a pleasant beer, and cheap beer on Blake’s Pier surrounded by sampans and pleasure junks where the IFC now stands, and the Hopewell Centre was very obviously the tallest building in Hong Kong. In some ways, however, almost nothing has changed. While land reclamation has splurged, and spectacular towers have soared and entire cities have been raised from mudflats in the New Territories, Hong Kong’s streets in the older urban areas have remained jammed with boiling hot, honking, smoke-belching traffic jams that achieve nothing but frayed tempers and a very unpleasant environment.

Queen’s Road Central is still a semi-permanent gridlock. Hennessy Road, Queen’s Road East and Des Voeux Road are almost entirely given over to traffic while pedestrians scurry along the narrow footpaths, like rats in a gutter with hardly a seat to be seen. There were far fewer traffic lights and railings 30 years ago, crossing the road and driving was more of a gamble then, so some credit is due for attempting to introduce safety measures. Now everybody wants to get rid of the ugly railings, but this can never happen until we recognise that the railings

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are just a symptom of a greater problem. The streets are currently designed overwhelmingly for vehicles, at the expense of pedestrians, cyclists and the environment.

This sign on a railing at the junction of Fleming Road and Hennessy Road says it already (Figure 84). It shows a pedestrian being run down by a car, strangely with no driver, no responsibility. It shouts ‘Be careful when crossing the road’, putting the onus on the hapless pedestrian to out of the way or suffer the consequences. The message is crystal clear: motor vehicles rule and pedestrians are just an inconvenience. You can see where the political power lies when the non-car owning population, that is 94% of us, is forced into about 20% of the available public space. Here in Queen’s Road, Central. De Voeux Road, Central. Connaught Road, Central.

Bearing in mind that the 6% of car owners are also pedestrians, some if not most of the time, the condition of the pedestrian environment is something that affects the entire population.

What has been going on elsewhere? Pedestrianisation took off in Copenhagen in 1962. Carnaby Street in London followed in 1973 and the major thoroughfare of Oxford Street was designated a bus-only street around that time. When I arrived in Leeds in the north of England, as a student in 1975, the pedestrianisation of the city centre was already underway. Here is a picture of the Headrow, which was made a bus and pedestrian priority street at that time (Figure 85).

Figure 84 – Hapless pedestrian sign in Hong Kong

Figure 85 – Bus and pedestrian priority street in Headrow

Internationally, it is now generally accepted that the streets are part of the public realm and belong to all. The benefits of prioritising walking and cycling are well recognised and it is standard practice to strictly control vehicle access and movement in core centres, as exemplified by London’s congestion charges. Take a look at New York’s Department of Transport ‘World Class Streets Report’. To quote Mayor Bloomberg, ‘One of the challenges is to “re-imagine the public realm.” We are finding creative new ways to make our streets more attractive to pedestrians and cyclists and those who wish to sit and relax and soak in the city.’

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Figure 86 – Weekday and Sunday on Chater Road

So what’s been happening in Hong Kong? While other ‘World Cities’ have been forging ahead, what has been going on here? Precious little progress has been made in Hong Kong’s streets, but there are some exceptions. Here is Chater Road on a typical weekday, and on a Sunday (Figure 86). For many years, Chater Road in Central has been closed to vehicles on Sundays and public holidays. This instant pedestrian precinct, which suddenly brings Central to life once a week, is achieved by a few plastic cones and a couple of directional signs.

Nathan Road, south of Haiphong Road was an excellent step in the right direction (Figure 87). About 7 years ago the vehicular carriageway was reduced from 6 lanes to 4 lanes, allowing for footpaths to be widened, and trees planted in the pavements and in the central median.

Some good starts were made in Causeway Bay with the pedestrianisation of the southern end of Paterson Street (Figure 88).

Figure 87 – Nathan Road Figure 88 – Paterson Street pedestrianisation

Here’s a photo of a 'bell-out' or localised footpath widening in Johnston Road (Figure 89). The original kerb ran along where the drain is going there and has been widened. The recent tree planting and public seat are indications of the benefits of this baby step in the right direction.

This tiny little bell-out at Luard Road, installed in the 1980's, when the street kitchens were removed, allowed for this spectacular tree planting (Figure 90).

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Figure 89 – Widened footpath in Johnston Road

Figure 90 – Bell-out area at Luard Road

The only section of Queen’s Road East which is remotely pleasant is this section at Dominion House where the footpath has been expanded into the building, doubling the effective footpath width and allowing much needed tree planting, and shelter from the rain (Figure 91). If only this had been standard practice since the 1980s on Hong Kong’s major streets in the older urban areas.

Figure 91 – Queen's Road East near Dominion House

More recently, the Government greening master plans have made substantial improvements to greening the urban areas, as here in Hennessy Road. And here in Murray Road next to the AIA building. But the greening master plans were not required to address the issue of public access and we were not able to expand footpaths unilaterally under that project. So unfortunately, what should have been the beginning of a complete overhaul of our older streets seems to have petered out and been forgotten.

The importance of the quality of the urban public realm is not lost on the private sector. An early expression of this was Hong Kong Land’s planting of 100 trees in Central to commemorate that company’s centenary in 1988. Here are some in Edinburgh Place, next to Jardine House. More recently, that company has been upgrading of paving, railings, bollards and other street furniture. Praiseworthy indeed, but neither of these efforts addresses the real issue, which is the overwhelming dominance of vehicles.

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This drawing of Pedder Street was published in the Sunday Post Magazine in 1989, along with this vision of what it could be without the vehicles; and here’s the same view last Thursday, almost a quarter of a century later (Figure 92). Some of Hong Kong Land’s trees are peeping around the corner, but the traffic jam remains to this day. Only the livery of the buses has changed.

Figure 92 – Drawings of Pedder Street (with and without vehicles) and recent photo

Central East of Pedder Street is relatively pedestrian friendly, as it is one of the few places where the vertical segregation of pedestrians and vehicles actually works to some reasonable degree. Of course one must remember that this was achieved by a process of demolishing virtually every single original building in the district, a luxury that is not realistic to expect in the other older urban areas.

It is interesting to note that when very large numbers of people have to be moved quickly, efficiently and safely, to see the Chinese New Year fireworks for example, the nearby streets are closed to vehicular traffic. Here’s a picture of my wife and I standing in the fast lane of Nathan Road, which we would not normally do (Figure 93). For a few hours you can experience the streets in Tsim Sha Tsui and Wan Chai North as they should be.

What are the benefits of reclaiming the streets for pedestrians? Safety – although the traffic is frequently crawling slower than the pedestrians are walking, the roads as they are, are made for speeding when clear. It is common to see vehicles belting down Queen’s Road East or Hennessy Road at 60km/h or 70km/h or more, when they have the chance. Street design that permits such speeds is totally unacceptable in such a dense built-up area.

Air quality and public health – as we all know, the concrete canyons of the older urban areas are tailor-made to maximise kerbside pollution. Reducing the number and speed of vehicles is the obvious solution. Besides, what is healthier than walking and cycling in a pollution free environment?

Essential vehicle accessibility – removing unnecessary traffic will improve access for essential vehicles, especially emergency vehicles and public transport vehicles.

Pedestrian accessibility – creating an environment that is friendly to children, the elderly and the disabled is an obligation. If Hong Kong wants to attract and retain top talents, the city environment needs to be much more family-friendly.

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Commercial benefits – in areas where the primary access to shops and buildings is by foot, an improvement in pedestrian access can have significant commercial benefits. The Mid-Levels escalator gave rise to a spectacular increase in commercial activity in the previously non-existent ‘Soho’, thanks to the revitalised street life and people watching opportunities. Pedestrian areas can also accommodate permanent or temporary market stalls. If you want to see some street life, go to Temple Street in Kowloon or Cross Street in Wan Chai (Figure 94).

Figure 94 – Market stalls at Cross StreetFigure 93 – Nathan Road closed to vehicles

Time savings – anybody stuck in a traffic jam knows about wasted time, but what about the time currently wasted by the much larger numbers of pedestrians obstructed by vehicles?

A better quality environment – better paving, more seats, more trees, more artworks, improved lighting, fewer signs and railings are self-evident improvements that require expanded pedestrian space. Trees, in particular, provide multiple services including shading, combating the heat island effect, improving air quality by catching particulates and releasing oxygen, not to mention their aesthetic and psychological benefits.

How do we achieve these benefits? Planned road pricing – here’s a picture of the absurd daily Cross Harbour Tunnel queue stretching back along Queen’s Road East (Figure 95) Obvious ways of improving this situation are electronic road pricing, and more sensible relative pricing of the 3 cross-harbour tunnels so that private vehicles pay a premium for the convenience of using the old Cross-Harbour Tunnel between Causeway Bay and Hung Hom.

Traffic calming – it is not necessary to ban vehicles completely. What is needed is a change in priorities when it comes to the design of the street. The street is part of the public realm, i.e. it belongs to everybody, not only to vehicle owners and operators. At present, vehicles are top priority, with public transport, pedestrians and cyclists in descending order of importance. By turning this upside down, putting pedestrians first, followed by bicycles, public transport and lastly, private vehicles, the city can be transformed. This means implementing simple traffic calming measures that are accepted practice in most developed cities including footpath widening and speed tables. Instead of pedestrians stepping down to the carriageway level, vehicles should be made to drive up to the pedestrian level

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at pedestrian crossings. Instead of designing the carriageways to maximise vehicle speeds, corners are made sharper, lanes are narrowed and vehicle access controlled by bollards, trees and planters.

Prioritise pollution-free public transport – the existing tram system on Hong Kong Island does not pollute the streets directly, and other types of vehicles such as trolleybuses could replace buses in some streets.

Remove unnecessary on-street parking – in Spring Garden Lane in Wan Chai we have the insane situation where there is a chronic conflict between vehicles and pedestrians, yet half the road is taken up by unnecessary on-street parking (Figure 96). These parked vehicles are not bona-fide delivery vehicles. These are so-called people-carriers. Their drivers are snoozing and vehicles’ engines idling, waiting for a call to pick up their employers. There are more than sufficient car-parking venues in Hong Kong to eliminate on-street parking as evidenced by Cheung Kong’s recent application to change the use of part of the car park in the Cheung Kong Centre.

Figure 95 – Long vehicle queue at Queen’s Road East

Make a start now – billions have been spent on reclaiming the harbour and building the new underground Central-Wan Chai Bypass. There should be a benefit to the public for this investment other than just another traffic jam. Let the by-pass really be a by-pass. Make Queen’s Road the focus of a pedestrian and bicycle priority area and put the heart back into the city. Queen’s Road approximately follows the original northern coastline of Hong Kong Island. So much of Hong Kong’s heritage is either on or very close to Queen’s Road. It is where Hong Kong’s modern history started 170 years ago. Why not make it the focus of an urban renaissance now?

We have the traffic and civil engineers, the landscape architects, the town planners and every possible type of technical expertise under the sun. The question is, does anyone have the political will and decisiveness to make this happen? There is a tremendous potential benefit here for Government. It would be an immediate, highly visible and technically easy way to have a beneficial impact on the daily experiences of a huge segment of the population, tourists and business visitors.

It does not all have to happen at once. It can be implemented in bite-size stages using temporary traffic arrangements initially, which can then be made permanent once any teething problems are ironed out.

Figure 96 – Vehicle and pedestrian conflict in Spring Garden Lane

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This will need strong leadership and a dedicated task force, since change to the streets affects practically every transportation mode, utility and Government department. Particularly important will be the follow up management of the pedestrian-friendly streets – how to balance the benefits of a more vibrant street life with the inevitable localised abuse by salespeople, for example.

Leadership is the critical issue here. Mayor Bloomberg pushed for comparable improvements in New York, and Ken Livingstone in London. Sir Murray Maclehose reclaimed much of our countryside for the public realm. Can anyone do the same for our urban streets? C.Y.? Supposing C.Y. cannot or will not pursue this issue, the Government inadvertently provokes people to reclaim the streets from time to time.

There has been much talk lately of the planned ‘Occupy Central’ demonstration. I would just like to point out that Central is already occupied every day, by traffic jams. If ‘Occupy Central’ goes ahead in July, who knows whether this will help the cause of universal suffrage, but I expect, it may inadvertently show the benefits of traffic free streets, and that Hong Kong will not grind to a halt and the economy will not collapse.

It is our choice whether our streets are full of pointless traffic jams or whether they can be designed in a people friendly way. It is up to all those who have a vision for a safer, better streetscape in Hong Kong to keep the pressure up on Government, and to convince people that it is feasible and desirable.

I chose the word ‘reclaim’ for the title of this talk advisedly. The word is usually used in relation to reclaiming land from the sea. In that case, it is the wrong word since you cannot reclaim something that did not exist in the first place. We do not reclaim land, we steal from the sea. But it is different in the case of our streets. We did have them once upon a time, but now it is time to take them back.

I want to leave you with a few images suggesting what a difference it would make if footpaths were widened by just one lane in the case of Queen’s Road East (Figure 97), Connaught Road Central, and De Voeux Road Central. Hong Kong deserves better than this. Widen the footpaths, curb the traffic and free the pedestrians, add in seats, trees and outdoor dining. Let’s get some romance back into this city. Let’s reclaim our streets.

Figure 97 – Queen's Road East widened by just one lane

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Chair ResponseProf. Melissa Cate Christ University of Hong Kong

That is an inspiring call to action. As a fellow landscape architect, I am very pleased to hear that especially the call for trees. We definitely need them downtown. We have touched on many of the issues and potential solutions.

Just inverting the titles that we have – Streets as Public Space, and now we have public space as streets because we focus a lot of conflicts between vehicles and pedestrians – what makes a street? For me, it is more than just streets. It is actually a whole pedestrian network.

I have been working quite a bit in Sheung Wan area of Hong Kong Island and I would have a couple of different things. This is Ladder Street. Do we call this a street? It does not have any cars but it is used by pedestrians (Figure 98). It is part of the pedestrian network. And what about this – is this a street? If we consider public space as streets, then we have to broaden our understanding of how we use space in Hong Kong and where we also need investment.

Obviously in the past in Hong Kong, these stair streets were very lively, Pottinger Street in the early mid-20th century (Figure 99).

Figure 98 – Ladder Street Figure 99 – Pottinger Street in mid-20th century

When we started to look at the Central and Western District. These are all the over 3,000 stairs in the Central and Western District (Figure 100). A pedestrian network is necessarily distributed and its decentralised but it is not always continuous. It is connected like sidewalks and also by roads.

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So in some of the works we do, we classified the different types of stairs that we have in Hong Kong. We started to realise that is not just quantity. It is really about quality. This came to my mind when we were talking about the pedestrianisation of Copenhagen. There are 3 different types of outdoor activities that we do – we do the “necessary’, the “optional” and the “social”.

In Hong Kong the “necessary” is prioritised, leaving “optional” and many times, the “social” behind. What we noticed when we were working in Pound Lane and Tai Ping Shan neighborhood (Figure 101), was that people make their own spaces, by taking over various places to sit. What we started to realise was that people make their own ways through spaces.

Figure 100 – Over 3,000 stairs in Central and Western District

Figure 101 – People in Pound Lane and Tai Ping Shan neighborhood

In Hong Kong, we walk on the sidewalks, then we go up an escalator, then we go through an elevated walkway, and then we go to a building and take an elevator to the next street, then we take another sidewalk and then another staircase. Because of this, the pedestrian network is much more complex than we originally thought. It is also very important that rather focusing our attention on infrastructural investment in one place, we could actually provide a number of improvements for the same or much less money. And I think a lot of people have discussed that today. I’ll just show a couple of small examples that we did. What I mean, is just the addition of a ramp to be able to get up stairs, simple widening our footpaths, or adding plants.

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This is a “ramp” on Po Hing Fong but it is totally random and I have no idea of what that thing is on the left (Figure 102). Why was it put in? I can’t figure it out. We could put in a real ramp that would allow accessibility for people who have wheelchairs and also have strollers. That can actually improve the environment.

Figure 102 – Po Hing Fong

Question & Answer Session

Prof. Melissa Cate Christ:

I was actually quite interested because we’ve provided three different perspectives – we have the public sector that has been trying to improve public space, the private sector, and it is actually quite interesting to bring in markets because obviously in Hong Kong, markets are part of our daily experience and actually in the past and now, are part of public space. I am interested to hear the definition of, what we do consider to be public space in Hong Kong.

Mr. Gavin Coates:

Public space is the space that is accessible to the general public. But of course there is a legal angle to it because some space may be accessible to general public, for example the inside of a private building or plaza associated with a private building, but it might not be legally a public space. If you go demonstrating for the freedom of Tibet in Prince’s Building, you will get chucked out. But in theory, you could do that in a public street because it is a public ground. This includes not only the streets, also the area that has been most forgotten. I mean parks have been provided. A lot of buildings have a good accessibility through the buildings. But the streets are exactly the same as they were when I first arrived in 1982. That is why the emphasis on streets. And these step streets, are of course, very much a part of the system.

Can I just add one other thing, which is in Wan Chai south of Gloucester Road? It is basically an environment that was designed before mass ownership or large-scale ownership of private vehicles. There was a question from someone earlier about why we have these huge development areas and wide roads. And the reason is because south

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of Gloucester Road, which was the waterfront until 1970s, was built without private motor cars in mind. It was everything built north of Gloucester Road for motorcars. That is why you ramp up when you go to a higher level and you have these massive buildings, massive roads, while nothing is happening at ground level. The older urban areas were designed before there were cars. They were not made for cars actually. They were made for people.

Dr. Calvin Lee Kwan:

Actually I think you got it right. For us, public space is anywhere the public can access. So the shopping centre, it’s just inside the shopping centre, inside the shopping mall, inside the wet markets. It’s also the rooftop area. We do not necessarily have a lot of open space in Hong Kong and one of the very under utilized areas is our rooftop areas, at least on top of shopping centres. That is another area that we are looking into, for redesigning and redeveloping, to make it somewhere people can congregate and have more fun as well. They are opened but there is nothing up there. Certain shopping centres we own and those we are going to redesign. There are other areas that area under Housing Authority’s control, so there are some things we can not do yet either. But the ones that we can renovate or refurbish, we treat those as public space as well.

Mr. Raymond Lee:

It’s actually quite easy for me to be last in this row – I’ll just say I agree with everything they said. The question really reminded me on one of the occasions we had within this venue as well. One of your partner organisation, Public Space Initiatives, was discussing exactly the same issues and questions. It’s very clear that when we get into a park, particularly the parks managed by the Government, it is definitely a public space. You progress on to the next questions – when you get into a shopping mall, is that going to be a public space? It is starting to get blurry. And then we progress a little bit more – if we get into sort of a tourist agent office, is that a public space?

In a nutshell, public space is space that can be accessible to the public. There is not necessarily a difference between spaces privately owned or publicly owned, but there are certain spaces within the public realm that the Government has more authority or chances to influence or make a difference. This is the area we are concentrating our current effort on. That is how I see what public space is.

Question:

Hong Kong people do walk a lot, in spite of the very hostile walking environments. And I think you need to commend people of Hong Kong for being tolerant because even if you compare with other cities, you tend to walk a lot more regularly in the MTR or out on the streets, footbridges. In other words, you have that walking culture. What you really need now is to just change the title of this thing – simple as make it “Walkable Streets, Livable Cities.” So you can make Hong Kong more walkable and people will enjoy walking. If you go to US, say, LA or some other cities – I used to live in Irvine, California before, and it was very well designed, new development, new city. You can see hardly anyone walking. It has the right proportion of trees, footpaths and everything.

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What does Hong Kong have? None of the above. Still you walk a lot in spite of the worse walking condition. All we need to do is actually reclaim the streets for the people and give the pedestrian priority. Then you will have a more livable city. Hopefully, with this symposium, you can do one thing, which is the signal lights that we were talking about earlier, reclaiming some of the streets and having a few more pedestrian crossings. These will be a start to begin with. I want to know what the panelists think.

Mr. Gavin Coates:

I absolutely do agree and Hong Kong is fantastic in a way that so many people walk. But that is only designed to a certain extent, as it is only an accident of history. And I think what you’re saying links right back to what Paul mentioned earlier, which is we do not just want a little drain to run along. We want places where you can dwell and where you can spend time. That is what would make the city change and become a much better place to live in, a place where you want to walk, not only where you have to walk, and sit down.

Question:

Raymond, you are doing some studies on how to improve the pedestrian experience from the MTR to the harbour front. That is very nice but the streetscapes along the routes are garages and industrial buildings, I’m not sure that’s a very pleasant view for pedestrians. Is there anything the Government wants to do about them? If not, at least for the new buildings to be planned, are they going to have streets frontages where people can actually enjoy the walking experience along the way?

Mr. Raymond Lee:

The second part is easier and the short answer is “yes”. Development projects within this area will require creating more space for pedestrians. For the first question, it is a little bit more difficult and that is exactly the issue that we are trying hard to overcome because as you have rightly mentioned, the walking environment in this district is not very good at the moment. There is a combination of different reasons as I have presented earlier on to you in my presentation. I guess we have to figure out a way to find space to improve pedestrian experience in this area. For example, for the same amount of time involved, say 10 minutes, which is a very comfortable walking distance, the environment of Hong Kong and that walking environment can make a huge difference. If we have a good walking environment, people may be willing to walk for 15 or 20 minutes. But if the environment is hostile, people will hesitate to even do a 10-minute walk. This is the exact challenge we are facing within this district.

Question:

I’m known as being part of the Cycling Alliance. I think cycling is something we should address. The other thing is about the broadening of the scope of as it’s been defined. People are talking about how it should be urban areas not streets, mobility not walkable. The point I’m trying to make is cycling gets labeled by many people, including many cyclists, as a singular activity. But in fact, cycling can be effectively

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pedestrianism. In an urban space where people are moving on a pedestrian speed, people on bicycles can be totally integral with that, just as they can be in a different situation, as part of the road traffic. So I was just wondering, Raymond, you were talking about Kwun Tong, the promenade here, and making it accessible to the pedestrians. I interpreted that as being like on the Hong Kong side, the linkage from the inland transport by MTR, the main roads – how to get people out to the waterfront place by bicycle and cycling along the harbour front? Having cycling as part of the transport movement could be a different way to look at pedestrianism and I was just wondering if that would be part of your solutions.

Mr. Gavin Coates:

I do cycle every day because I live in Mui Wo in Lantau, but I only cycle for about 10 minutes every day. You are absolutely right. I work in Hopewell Centre and the thing that infuriates me is that the most difficult part of my commute in the morning – because it is easy to cycle around the ferry pier – is when I try to get from the ferry pier to the Hopewell Centre and I know I can cycle it in about 7 minutes, but I dare not. I just don’t dare to cycle along Queensway. But personally, I fully support what you were saying.

Dr. Calvin Lee Kwan:

Cycling is an interesting topic for us because we at The Link, we actually promote cycling, mainly in Hang Hau and Tseung Kwan O areas because there are cycling paths available. However, one thing that we are finding out is that not all the paths are connected, but we do want to encourage. We have initiatives to encourage people living around those areas to cycle more. They do come and we provide bike services in certain shopping centres for that as well. So it is certainly something that we promote.

Mr. Raymond Lee:

I am not going to get into the difficult questions of whether cycling is transport more or recreation more, I will leave that to my colleagues in the Government. As far as the designs, I think this area, Kwun Tong, in particular when we have continued to work to link up Kwun Tong and Kai Tak, and probably the west of the Kowloon waterfront, will really change cycling facilities there. At the moment we do not have that, but once we have that sort of waterfront promenade, it has really big potential. We should concentrate on easy workable solutions and I think that is definitely workable, although at this moment the design does not contain cycling facilities. But it’s definitely workable.

Prof. Melissa Cate Christ:

I am also a cyclist. I have not gotten on a bicycle since I got to Hong Kong, which is very sad. I come from Seattle and I feel like I have seen the situation. I’ve also lived in San Francisco. It is very possible to have tiny streets and lots of hills and still have bicycles. So I’d like to say – yea, that’s what allowed me to be a pedestrian: being able to bicycle and then walk somewhere.

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Panel Discussion(Moderated by Mr. Simon Ng, Civic Exchange)

Mr. Fred Brown MVA

Thank you very much for inviting me. It’s been an excellent day. I’m not going to start repeating a lot of what’s been said today because everything’s been covered. And particularly the technical design issues inspiring people about pedestrian access and about city streets – I think that’s been great. So I would like to focus on some of the hurdles in getting there. First thing, and I realise I’m preaching to the choir here, so changing your mindset is probably not necessary, but it is a big task. Somebody said they are going around in circle for 10 years. I have been going around in them for 35 years in Hong Kong. I’m thrilled to see today and hear what Raymond was saying about Kowloon East etc. I think it’s great that there is a big ground swell now. But we do have a very big job selling to everybody the benefits. Measuring these is something quite difficult because from the Government’s perspective, to invest in rail and road, they need to understand the benefits to justify it to the public. So it is great to hear people can now measure environment impact better. It is very important when we come to justify pedestrian schemes, not to ourselves, but to people that evaluate, the Government, the LegCo, the public and the District Council. That is something worth pursuing and is very encouraging.

Another thing is we have a lot of good manuals and guidelines etc., but building and understanding networks is fundamental. We’ve heard a lot of that today. I was very pleased to hear about functional design. I call it A to B movement, active streets and passive areas. They need to put in some kind of hierarchy that interacts with itself and also interacts with the adjacent buildings and activities. It is not just the pedestrian planner. It’s much bigger than that. We also need to set standards – how long does it take to get from A to B, to extend public transport station catchments, better level of service to people moving around just within the city etc. It is not just about capacity and volume, and overloading escalators. It is about quality.

We do not really have a professional and planning process with pedestrians in Hong Kong. We got lots of people doing great things like people in Kowloon East setting up a traffic group to pursue pedestrian developments. We have people doing certain studies in certain areas. But we got a problem through everything that flows, except for pedestrians. We got lots of people that do bits for the pedestrians, and we got many studies but we need to bring all that together and start to work towards district master plans. We need something that’s in the planning system, something that can get budgeted and can go to the LegCo, finalised at the committee and so we can build things regularly, not a big one-off, two-half or three years, just borrowing the average like flyovers and traffic engineering. It needs to go into a process and this is the fact we need to work towards.

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In the old days, there had been transport statistics in everything. It came up with pedestrian plans, and there was a pedestrian unit, like Transport Department who did lots of good things. But all that’s faded away and now we just have these bigger initiatives, which are great. But we actually need a whole process. My experience is that the cooperation between the public and private sector is not good at the moment and developing pedestrian scheme has a lot of issues between public areas and private areas, corporations and owners. At the moment it is difficult and everybody is losing.

Jumping the hurdles – socioeconomic impacts. When you make a pedestrian scheme, whether it is pedestrianisation or widening a footpath, you change the socio-economic landscape. The use next to that facility will change and that is something quite important. It has effect on the community, changes people’s living standard, brings new people in and some people lose out. That needs careful attention, public engagement, implementation and putting in the planning process.

Then we have the operation issues. We run into the hurdle of security. These are serious issues and it is totally unfair to assume departments of Government will sort these out and when they are not resourced. When we build an expressway, we get the police for extra motorbikes. We get extra people to do the landscape. We have the resource to do this. We cannot just suddenly dump it on a department, and it’s pretty tough when you talk to people at working level. They say, “I don’t want to do this thing because we can’t manage”, not because they do not want to do it or because they do not like it.

A couple of quick things. Bit of discussion today about the grain of the city. Once you make a decision about size of lodge, you have made a huge decision about pedestrian’s facilities, size of roads and grade separation. West Kowloon is an example. There was a discussion in the 1980s about making the same grain, and the decision was to make a big grain. This road actually went all the way around to Tsim Sha Tsui back in those days. Once you have done that, you got big roads and large areas where pedestrians have to be planned into the development, so it is a different design issue. The first development here was a podium city. Very luckily and happily, everybody said when West Kowloon Terminus came along that we want the pedestrians at ground level. That spread throughout the whole of here. Now we have a fantastic opportunity to serve these pedestrian activities, traffic below, and people above. Hopefully we can energise the designs even without traffic. This shows the mobility network for people of all mobility types, plus information points and the level changes. So that’s something that has to be done.

The biggest opportunity around is Hong Kong Island. We got all these railway stations, possibly new ones. We got a by-pass. What shouldn’t we do? We should not still argue about pedestrians against vehicles. We should start saying what we want to do with this city. Then later on, we decide on what we should do with the vehicles. If we get into the battle, we will lose the war. We need to review all these streets and have a look at De Voeux Road Central, Queen’s Road Central etc. We did it before and we lost. We have another go at it and all of these areas are full of opportunities now. Things have changed, not just the road traffic, railway as well. Buses want to cut back and new escalators cross. Enough. Thank you very much.

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Ms. Gigi Lau 30SGroup

I’m excited to discuss streets and public space. I am a deputy convener of the Pound Lane Concern Group. Pound Lane is where three generations of my family have lived. We object to the Pound Lane escalator. This proposal was also mentioned by Anthony Cheung and Melissa. I will mention it more later. Why it is as important as streets as public space? For social gathering, for tangible environment, social and economic benefit, reduce carbon emission, etc.

But when we discuss an ideal model of walkability in Hong Kong, should we just associate with western models? Trees, cycle paths, footpaths on street level. This picture shows an ideal model street, photo taken in upper Manhattan last week. However, how large should this footpath be (Figure 103)? What is the definition of a “street” in Hong Kong? I would define the street in Hong Kong as multilayered: on ground, above ground and underground. Expectations from movies and Hong Kong show multilayered streets have become Hong Kong’s important cityscape. You will find it depicted in Japanese animations and Hong Kong movies such as the Ghost in the Shell, All About Love, and Chungking Express. The Japanese animations show the multilayered cityscape of Hong Kong as a model of a future city.

Figure 103 – Model street in Manhattan

Hong Kong is different from European cities. Hong Kong is more compact, multilevel layered and 3 dimensional. Chungking Express and All About Love both took a shot of the Central Mid-level escalator (Figure 104). This walking system created an interesting interaction between people. People are watching each other from the footbridge to the street level, or from the building to footbridge.

This shows how people actually use the streets as public space in Hong Kong (Figure 105). We held a public talk in Pound Lane about utilising the steps, the footpaths in Central occupied by domestic helpers, in Element Mall, and in protests. In all multilayers, people expect the streets to provide the function of circulation access, seats, shading, group gathering, amphitheatre, and etc.

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Figure 104 – Movie shots at Central Mid-level escalator

Figure 105 – Streets as public space in Hong Kong

This map is from a book, Cities Without Ground, by Jonathan Solomon (Figure 106). I was one of the research assistants when I was in the university. This book mapped it how compacted, how 3 dimensional, how multilayered our city is. The book also mapped the other sites, for example, in Central and other multilayered sites. Some of the linkages work. Some do not. This mapping exercise is not only for mapping the circulation, but also about public space. The areas we marked not only on footpaths and public streets, but also the circulation in shopping mall. Therefore the public space definition here is how people use the space rather than it is publicly owned or privately owned.

Figure 106 – Map from Cities Without Ground, by Jonathan Solomon

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We divided it into 5 principles of walkability. I would like to respond to what Julian Kwong said today, on creating a new system for Hong Kong, we need to know where the historic districts are, where the new towns are, so that we have different kinds of walking experience. For example, in some historic areas such as Pound Lane, Taipingshan district in Sheung Wan, the first Chinese settlement of the British colonial age, it was developed on slopes, level lanes and full of steps. If we use barrier-free access to look at the area, it does not meet the standard. But if we can have some barrier-free access in some wider areas, in a reasonable distance to link to the historic district, and also improve the uneven step distance to make it more walkable, just like what Melissa showed us.

The second principle is to develop continuous walking system. Responding to Paul's "Missing Links" in Nathan Road Tsim Sha Tsui, because Tsim Sha Tsui was promoting a 2 dimensional walking experience, if we suddenly change it to subway, people hate it. Also transform the leftover space such as the under flyover space. The fourth one is about multilayered streets and public space, providing seats, materials, view decks etc. The fifth is about public and private sector partnerships.

On ground what can we do? In some new town development, we have wider footpaths, then we can put more street furniture. We can actually lie on the furniture. In some junk space, we actually can utilise some nice designs. This picture shows the space between vehicle roads in Barcelona. I think it is good to settle it between vehicles and the park. We have historic protection zone, and some pocket parks to link with the existing walking routes (Figure 107).

Figure 107 – On ground initiatives

For above ground, we can also develop public space such as Highline in New York, green canopy, also more seats (Figure 108).

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In underground, we actually can transform the shopping mall concept into subway. At least we provide seats in subway (Figure 109).

Figure 108– Above ground initiatives

Figure 109 – Underground initiatives

Ms. Ada Ying-Kay Wong, JP Hong Kong Institute of Contemporary Culture

I have been a District Councillor and an urban Councillor for a total of 14 years. I have been in the community and I have seen some interesting sites which I’m going to show you. I am going to advocate to you that the Lesser the Better.

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This is what I call a small park but it is like a prison park (Figure 110). This is in the olden days of Hong Kong and Kowloon. We surely do not want these rails and gates?

These are signs that you should be familiar with at the entrance of our Leisure and Cultural Services Department parks. Here we have a total of 14 prohibitions. No ball games, no bird feeding, no lying on benches etc. But here is a bigger one. Can you count how many prohibitions, how many ‘no’s there are? There are a total of 21 prohibitions. You see there are six over there, one no dogs allowed, another repeat of no dogs allowed, a total of 21 prohibitons (Figure 111).

Figure 110 – Small park Figure 111 – Prohibition signs at parks

And here. This photo is about railings (Figure 112). How many railings do you see here? Five or six. What will happen if we eliminate all those? Will the space be so much better?

This is supposed to be a ramp for the disabled but do you see the entrance (Figure 113)? Where does it go, it is so complicated. I think wheelchair users cannot use it.

Figure 112 – Railings Figure 113 – Ramp for the disabled

This picture is nice, but it is about railings, continuous and continuous railings, on this side and that side across the road. This is more railings and barriers. Even plants are placed like this to serve as barrier but I still see people just jump across (Figure 114). It just causes more danger.

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Figure 114 – Continuous railings Figure 115 – Tactile

My very quick advocacy is our streets will look so much better if we have no railings, no poles, no signs, no prohibition signs and no excessive built structures etc. But then my Government friends will say, “No, people cannot behave.” How would people react to more walkability, more freedom, more experimentation?

I have been actually trying out a little experiment in the last two years, thanks to the West Kowloon Authority. In this vast open space in West Kowloon, I have done the art mart (Figure 116) and I have not even designated in the area that they should sell their stuff but it seems quite orderly and they are quite happy. They are really cheerful, enjoying the freedom of the space, with a live band, with grass, with no barriers, with no prohibition signs, with no railings, with no excessive built structures. So please, can we just eliminate all that. It is not that expensive to eliminate, but actually, it is very costly to put all those poles and excessive signage in there.

Figure 116 – Art events in West Kowloon

Here is a tunnel that nobody ever uses. Here is a kerb where on one side we have disabled access, but where is that on the other side? And here is a worse picture. What does it say? There is a pole and these are the tactile blocks for the visually impaired, but there is a pole right there (Figure 115). What is the purpose of this pole? Can this be got rid of?

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Ms. Xiaomei Duan Institute for Transportation and Development Policy

My presentation is mainly some best practice examples from mainland China and some are international. Everyone knows Hong Kong is a modern city and is already leading in many aspects in the transportation area. But in some areas, like the non-motorised transportation, greenways and bike sharing, still have a lot to catch up, like many other cities around the world.

Firstly it is the BRT. BRT is an opportunity for experts to improve the city. This is Ulanbator and we have BRT to improve the overall transportation. This is currently the main road in the city (Figure 117). This is quite a mess, not good for anybody. Pedestrians have no safe crossing. But with BRT, we will have a safe crossing and an island, shading, separate bike lanes and spacious walkways. So this is an opportunity.

Figure 117 – BRT in Ulanbator

Many cities like Kuala Lumpur are similar. I did not say we need BRT in Hong Kong but in many cities, BRT provides a good opportunity to reduce congestion and also to provide better conditions for pedestrians and cyclists, and for the quality of life and for the city’s environment.

This is some of our products of Guangzhou BRT. It is the second biggest in the world and it is the best in Asia. This shows the "before" and "after" (Figure 118). It really improved for transportation. We also add the shading. Guangzhou, like many other cities like Hong Kong, has no crossings in many places but now you can see by adding the station, we have safe crossing and also separate bike-lanes and big space for cyclists and the widened walkways. Before, passengers had to wait on the walkway, blocking other cyclists. Also for the traffic black spots, by introducing BRT it has been improved and also reduces traffic delay, as well as improvement for cyclists and walking conditions.

Many cities realised that a good city should provide good public space in order to attract talents to work for the city, not only for improving the air quality, but also for a better living condition. BRT can provide a good connection and accessibility for cyclists and pedestrians, not only the BRT, but also the metro stations, light rail stations and all the public stations should have good connectivity. So many cities in China are doing this.

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Figure 118 – Before and after Guangzhou BRT is built

Greenways – Guangdong is a good example and it has now become a national policy. This river before upgrading was like a road but now it has been opened up (Figure 119). It is now a new landmark in Guangzhou.

Figure 119 - Lizhiwan Canal, before and after the upgrade

Another spectacular project is at the Donghaochong Canal (Figure 120). It was a dirty canal and now it’s very nice. The Government spent millions of dollars for the pedestrians and public space because the city leaders realised they should not only spend money on the crossways, they should do something for the people. Hong Kong has many of the same opportunities to build a better Hong Kong. Same in other cities, there are opportunities to make it easier and safer for cyclists.

Lastly, it is bike sharing. Hong Kong has many opportunities to implement bike sharing. In China, many cities have been having good experience (Figure 121). In Guangzhou, we have the bike sharing together with the BRT. We have 5,000 bicycles in more than 100 stations. In China, there are more than 30 cities implementing bike sharing in the recent 5 years. China also has quite good bike technologies. This allows us to use the same bicycles for London and Paris bike sharing. It is a very good technology and they provide 5-year warranty. So far the best is in Shenzhen, they are using this technology and it is just implemented recently. Many modern cities around the world, like London, Paris, New York and Washington, are doing bike sharing already. Why Hong Kong can't do bike sharing? It will be very popular.

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Here are some of the main ideas – they may not be completely suitable for Hong Kong as I am not that familiar but for bike sharing and greenways, maybe Hong Kong can think about it. And we also should do something for the general public, as well as to reduce air pollution, better air for a better quality of life. We hope Hong Kong can do even better than that.

Figure 120 – Donghaochong Canal, before & after the greenway

Figure 121 – Bike sharing in China

Question & Answer Session

Mr. Simon Ng:

What are the key drivers behind all these changes in Guangzhou? Because very often we think that Hong Kong can make it happen but it did not happen. Of course we know why, we will discuss that later. In Guangzhou what are the key factors? What are the key drivers to make such a drastic change in the last few years?

Ms. Xiaomei Duan:

For the BRT and greenways – before it was congested and a conflict between everyone. After they are implemented, car speed increased by 30% at least. Another issue I want to mention, like in Hong Kong and Chinese cities, the car transporation is small – the minority. 80%

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of people walk and use public transportation. We have to improve the majority. Now city leaders realised this. They do not have other options, we can’t design the city based on cars, but we have to give public transportation priority and also give the cyclists and people who walk the priority.

Mr. Simon Ng:

You mentioned the leaders, can you say a few more words about the leaders or the Mayors? We talked about political will this morning - we need a strong leader who has a vision. Now I think we have a lot of vision in this room. How can we implement those visions? How can we make it real? We do not want to just keep those as dreams. We want to realise them. How was that in Guangzhou?

Ms. Xiaomei Duan:

In fact, normally in China, it is the city Mayor who made the decision, not the Central Government. It took us 5 years to show the public and persuade the media so as to make them understand that BRT is good for the city. And for the greenways, it is easier, Wang Yang highly supports greenways. So in Guangzhou we built more than 2,000 greenways. People really like it.

Mr. Simon Ng:

You’ve been doing a lot of work in China and in Asia. How important is that for the leaders or the institutional framework to support that kind of innovative ideas?

Mr. Fred Brown:

In the early 1990s, we did World Bank jobs in Guangzhou. In those days, the mayor wanted expressways. He didn’t want bicycles, because they were backward. The World Bank fell out with them and we were in the middle. So they built a lot of expressways, but it was for their economic growth, there is a reason behind it. It was not anybody being off key. Then the next generation railways, the new Mayor came in. They overtook us and the later generation is at the top, the champions, made it very clear that the environment is number one, both social development and economic development.

It is a city, not just an industrial city. It is a high educational city, a commercial one, it’s the centre one of the Guangdong province. It is very important to clean up the environment and make it a livable city. This was the strategy I worked for the city few years back. It’s great to hear that’s what’s happening, the BRT is a great success, as well as the pedestrian greening. But champion from the top is so important. It needs that drive to change the mindset of everybody and to give permission to people to change their mindset. It is quite important.

Question:

To what extent in Guangzhou, was there a need to bridge different departments together. How did you bring together different departments and Government to do the transporation planning, environment, health? How much was that a problem?

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Ms. Xiaomei Duan:

Firstly, the political view is the most important thing in China. We provided the opportunities such as the cycle-business program. We have to convince the political leaders. After we gain their strong support, and after the Mayor's, everything is easy. For greenways, we gained the support from the party secretary of the Guangdong Province. But I think the decision makers have greatly improved their vision and they know now we have to compete with Shanghai and other modern cities. We have to make it more attractive for the highly educated people. We need to have the good workers. Wang Yang mentioned, we have to make a happy and liveable Guangdong. They do not only focus on GDP now. It is a big change.

Question:

This is really a question for the floor, rather than the panel. My first question would be, is there anyone from Transport Department here? Because what we’re hearing from the front is it needs to come from the top down, but we have no one here. We have people from Guangzhou who are in the department involved with making walkable cities, but here in Hong Kong we’re having this seminar today but we do not have anyone from the Government to listen to what’s being said which I think is part of our problem. How do we get over that? Maybe someone can answer me. I think the other major point on the top of that would be how did we end up with the new Government office being built in Tamar that does not connect through the private shopping centre across the road? People have to come up the bridge, go down the escalator to street level, and even the Government could not seem to work out a deal, whereby they could connect through the private development. I think those two issues are pretty prime and illustrates some of the problems we have in Hong Kong. So my question is – how can we get through the barriers? Everyone here, we’re all on the same page – we want to improve our city. We know some of the ways we can do right now, it is an ongoing issue. How can we do that? How can we empower each other and the population to achieve something great for our city?

Mr. Paul Zimmerman:

I want to talk about the Tamar thing. I wrote to Henry Tang who is in charge, about why we weren’t connecting and the answer was: there are so many different owners in Admiralty Centre. That will be unfeasible, “Sorry, it will be too expensive. If you want me to put the bridge right there, maybe in the future, the private property owner won’t connect to my footbridge and they pay.” But of course no one will ever do this because it’s a strata-owned building so this forever will ever be a problem. So this is when it comes down to - we need a district plan, a master plan and then implementation mechanism, and there are all these issues that we highlighted really need to get fixed.

Ms. Ada Ying-Kay Wong:

I think Tamar footbridge is actually a time issue as well. Someone wants the office to build before the end of this term. There is a deadline for the completion of the work. For the bridge to go through Admiralty Centre shopping mall, the Government needs to buy at least 2 units in

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the shopping mall. But then you know what should be the pricing and how should that be negotiated, and what if the owners say no or if they say ok but want a higher and higher price. The negotiation will drag on. I would say the architect actually told the Government to try, but nobody wants to shoulder this responsibility. The easier solution is to have the escalator going straight down.

That goes to my second point and that is whether anybody wants to shoulder responsibility or whether they just want to pass the buck to somebody else. This is the mental attitude of most civil servants. Although they will personally tell you that "yes, all these railings and all these things are ugly, we can have less of them", there is one complaint, another set of railings will be constructed.

My idea would be: all of us to file a complaint and say there are too many railings and too many poles, too many prohibition signs, and see what will happen, because we have never had such a massive complaint. Paul's Missing Links is a good idea but you want to do it the civil way. You want to do it the way you want to call up the department and say, okay, come on, give me the missing links. We actually have to have a complaint culture in Hong Kong. The more you complain, the more you will get what you want. That is the quick answer to your question.

Of course in Hong Kong there is also another interesting phenomenon that is even the political view at the top, a lot of times we cannot get things done at the district level. You have got the District Council, District Councillors. They will say for safety issue we should have the railings. You saw the example that the walking trail without railings and it is all because of complaints, not because of this nervousness that something will happen. But nothing has happened in the last 150 years without railings. Why should we have railings now? It is the attitude and mindset that we now have a city that is not really walkable, and visually not nice. We have to fix that.

Mr. Simon Ng:

We heard the word empowerment just now from that question. Gigi, I know you’ve been doing a lot of work to empower civil society. Can you tell us a bit more about your view about what people can do, ordinary people like ourselves? Or what should we learn? What can you teach them so that they can act?

Ms. Gigi Lau:

My 3 generations of family have been living in Pound Lane. I come from there. When I see that escalator proposal being proposed there, I wrote an article to object it because I think Pound Lane is very important historic district in Hong Kong. It is record to the history and also the colonial history. We utilise the platform for lobbying, for policy advocacy. I met with the Pound Lane concern group, which is a group of local residents. Then they invited me to be the deputy convener of the group. Why I mention this is because we try to advocate as a citizen of Hong Kong, we'd better be more concerned about what is happening in the city. If see something that is not reasonable to us, then we come up to speak. It is a kind of civil engagement and participation.

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Question:

I’m still an optimist because I have been here for 18 years and we are moving there but very slowly. I think what we need in Hong Kong is a true city champion that can take things forward. The closest person who came to that was Carrie Lam. Maybe that’s something we need. Second, I agree with Ada, the District Council is being negative about this. People gave a proposal to them and the Government actually liked it but could not get it anywhere because the District Council and the shop owners nearby did not want anything because the rent will go up. It is still left there today as a parking place. So I think it’s everyone in their own special interest rather than the common good.

The thing third is I saw the pictures of West Kowloon. It is great to see, so I think small wins – demonstration that we can actually talk about. I know Paul is very frustrated about the Salisbury crossing – it has been talking about for years but still nothing happens. What if somebody just went tomorrow, put something down and blocked it up? Would it happen? Next, I think one thing about Hong Kong is that we tend to be very negative about everything. But when we have negativity in the public realm, things won’t move forward. You need a more positive mindset to make things work. And I think commending even the small victories would be a start because I know even in the Government structure, people want things to change. They just find it difficult. And if it comes to a point when people in the Government do not want to do anything because they don’t want to be blamed for anything that goes wrong – you can see in LegCo debates and everything. How can we change all these energy to positive energy and to make something happen, and Hong Kong truly become a harbor city, a walkable and livable city? I think we should have that vision and take it forward. And if you look at cities like Portland, Oregon, the citizens came together, came up with a vision and handed it to the Government and to make sure it happens. Maybe that is what should be done in Hong Kong.

Mr. Fred Brown:

Getting people working together, I think grassroots is the District Council, they should be really excited about this discussion because it is neighborhood level, community level. The TTC, Traffic Transport Committee, should have a pedestrian sub-group, they should be feeding up, not just the crossing thing. These are the things that they want in the neighborhood, these are the active areas, these are the passive areas – that kind of thing. It has to come from them. Otherwise if it’s top down, they might not want it. Back to the private sector, and as I said earlier, the last few years it has become more difficult. If you work with developers on big scheme and you suggest some nice pedestrian link, they say that’s fantastic, sorry, I'd love to do it but it is too risky. I’ll get into this and that big debate with the Government and the district council. Let’s just do some boring office with some steps in front and a ramp. I’m being cynical but that’s the problem. We need to find a way for the Government need to work better with the private sector. Same for the MTR, they want to do things and they have been very proactive but sometimes, it is too much hard work. It affects the program and it is often about the program, not money, that people worry about.

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Ms. Ada Ying-Kay Wong:

I have one suggestion and that is we should comb through the list of 500 district councillors and see apart from Paul Zimmerman, who else is courageous enough to take on these issues and they are the champions. We should work with them and see whether they could propose these other things in their own districts and see whether we can see change.

I was the District Council Chairwoman for 4 years. During that 4 years, I did one thing which started a whole series of pet parks. That was the first park for dogs or cats in Wanchai North. At that time, nobody thought that I could do it. Lots of Government officials said no you cannot do it, “It is too dangerous. Dogs will run around and there will be danger”. I said there must be at least one park for pets. I talked to the SPCA and thought about different issues. At the end of the day, that park was open for 3 years. Until now, it is temporarily closed for the new highway but it will be reopened. There was no accident and on weekends, up to 800 dogs were there. After that, people are not so worried about pet parks anymore. They would say, “look at that Wanchai Park”. Everybody loved it and people thank me for that. Now we see a pet park in the eastern district near Quarry Bay, Taikooshing, and there is another pet park on Kowloon side. At that time, I was brave enough to say why not go ahead with it. Of course I talked to the advisor at SDC. So we need to identify these councilors, Paul maybe you can help with that.

Mr. Paul Zimmerman:

Somehow, institutionally or culturally, we should give credit to those councilors or others who initiate something new and different, that becomes a success. Because otherwise, it is about blame, especially in civil service. Anybody who tries something new, risks being labeled, whereas they keep on doing the same old same old, they get their job and everything stays the same.

Ms. Ada Ying-Kay Wong:

Designing Hong Kong can have an innovator award of the year, something like that, for the District Councilor who is the most innovative one. One in each district. There will be big ceremony somewhere and a lot of fanfare. Everybody will be very happy about it.

Question:

I keep wondering two things. In the morning we talked about things that need to be improved. But I keep wondering, if we want to empower not only people inside this room, but also people outside this room, so that they will be able to give an ask. An ask that is really tangible and that they consider to be improving their living, and then that ask can be transferred, conveyed to our potential champions like in the District Council or people in the Transport Department. Maybe that will help us to move forward with this conversation. I keep wondering, haven’t been in Hong Kong for more than ten years, then I come back, it just becomes less pedestrian friendly. What is the problem here? Can we really formulate it in a way that can hold

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people accountable? That can help us all gather a consensus to make things happen? For example, in New York City, they have the plan New York City 2030. In that, they laid all the things, concrete. For example, every citizen in New York should be within 10-minute walk from a park. Those are the things that can help us convey – I think that this is a livable city. That is something Hong Kong citizens should desire and aspire to. So if we can come up with a list, and use that list to engage other people, who might be aware that I cannot cross this street, I take it for granted that this is given. If I can really formulate it in a way to get more support from the public and then put it out to our leaders, and have this as a way to hold them accountable, maybe that’s a way to bring this conversation a little more forward and engage more people. I just want to throw this idea to the floor and to the panelists and know what you think. I don’t know whether this has worked before, so I just want to get some feedback.

Mr. Simon Ng:

I can summarise that in 2 words – common sense. Basically what we are talking about, are all common sense. These are things that we are supposed to happen around us rather than us fighting for them. What do you think, the panelists?

Ms. Ada Ying-Kay Wong:

It is common sense but people are afraid to make mistakes. They do not understand that this is only common sense. We need to assure them, come on, we need change. It is alright to make mistakes. But it seems it is really bad when they make mistakes, so they are so afraid. So they do not do anything.

Mr. Fred Brown:

It is simple to do tests. We have seen them done. Just put a few cones down Queen's Road on one lane and see what happens, closing after 4:30 or 6:30 in the evening, or closing on Sunday. You can gradually test it. That is one way to go but I also felt in the 1990s when TD was doing some good work, they were doing little incremental bits because no one would let them do the big bang. Maybe we need a big bang as well somewhere too – pedestrianise Queen’s Road or half of De Voeux Road and really see what happens, whether you do it with permanent fixtures or do it just to see what happens. It always takes 2 to 3 weeks. I was talking to a guy this morning who is from New York about how they implement it. Government naturally, and consultants working for them, are terrified when you start a new scheme like that. Give it 2 to 3 weeks and then it starts to work. So I really do think we need some brave experiments. I would not mind a big bang one as well as a few incremental little bits. I was involved in Russell Street, for the first 50 meters, and that kind of worked, but that was nothing and it kept on getting bigger and bigger. If you had done the whole area at once, what would have happened? So I think it would be interesting to see whether people want to go for it or not.

Question:

Hong Kong people need more public engagement and social awareness. Lots of Hong Kong people are too complacent, or too busy

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to think about that they can have a better life. Everyday, when they walk on the streets, sucking in the heavily polluted, heavily-laden with metal air. They are not aware of the severe impact on their health because it is not critical, it’s not immediate and traumatic. There is a lack of open public debate awareness about what we are suffering. I think everybody should be engaged in this environmental discussion and use the empowerment and energy to make change. And, don't look up to the leaders.

Mr. Gavin Coates:

I agree with Fred. There is case for pressurising people on the top that I have less and less confidence that this is actually going to achieve anything. Your incremental approach may be another way of doing it, which seems to be the way that the Transport Department was doing it, at Johnston Road. The bell-outs in Johnston Road seemed to appear almost overnight while nobody noticed. It is beginning to take effect.

Question:

I am writing about transit-oriented design and development. I was looking at Fred’s pictures, on how the MTR seems to have creates the islands rather than necessarily improving the connection between the city as a whole. And I think a lot of people, particularly people visiting Hong Kong feel that they are travelling from island to island because the MTR not necessarily seeing it as as a whole. And then looking at what Xiaomei said, the BRT actually improve the visible connection of the city as a whole. I was wondering the panel has any words on that on how the transportation system can actually improve the walkability or the understanding of a city as one whole entity rather than individual elements.

Mr. Fred Brown:

The pedestrian network is connecting to railway stations, pedestrians, public transport, a network opportunity for the whole Hong Kong Island North. Everybody will be within 500m from the MTR and it is providing a decent walking network. That is the whole concept. Once you’ve done that, you start with the question – the usage of streets, and not just pedestrians, cars, but what do you want to use our street. If you look at Des Voeux Road Central, it is a shock across the hillside. But that concept you described is existed with those railways built. We will have much better environmental system.

Ms. Xiaomei Duan:

For the BRT, it is suitable for most of the cities, especially for the rapidly expanded cities. But in the case of Hong Kong, you already have transport stations and subways. The public transportation load is already quite high. Still we can improve the walking and cycling environment, especially the bike sharing, can make it integrate with the metro transportation systems, maybe not only by BRT. I do not mean that BRT is the only solution but to improve the walking and cycling environment is necessary for Hong Kong.

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Mr. Fred Brown:

The bus, priority corridor and Connaught Road traffic down there, why not put some longer buses and only have bus stops? And the buses gap is lack these days. Ten years ago they wouldn’t make it but today they would. It might be a kind of BRT Hong Kong style.

Ms. Xiaomei Duan:

Can we think about changing the road to something like the transit malls? They all allow the public transportation, taxis, cyclists, pedestrians to use this road, especially maybe on weekends or some special hours. We can do a survey on that road – how many private cars used, and how many is necessary, why they use this road, can they use other roads, alternative road, maybe through this study we can convince the leaders to try. In Guangzhou, when we implemented the pedestrian street, many traffic places, shops are against because they think that blocking the way for greenway or pedestrian streets will kill their economy. Actually it benefits the economy because people will go there for shopping. Maybe that is a start.

Question:

At district level has that been talked about doing an assessment on District Councilors? They could say, remove the railings, remove the fences, remove all the poles. Do they approve or fund that? Has that been talked about how well District Councilors do?

Ms. Ada Ying-Kay Wong:

Hong Kong works like this. We have people who would say “wonderful, no more prohibition signs”. But you will have another voice, “We want more prohibition signs! Nobody should sing or dance in the park”. They balance out each other. And the official would not do anything. That is what we are facing.

Question:

We could share with our friends and people beyond these groups. We should have a social media network. This could put pressure on the Government, so that they can do something on it.

Mr. Gigi Lau:

Yes, sure. I use Facebook.

Question:

In front of my office, there is a small tiny tree I planted and I think it is great. But then it fell down every year and I have to plant it again. I love trees. You would agree that trees make our city more beautiful. Is there any system to make sure there are the right trees and cares for the trees? How Hong Kong to improve that situation?

Mr. Gavin Coates:

During the last 10 years, I have been working on a greening master plan for the Civil Engineering Department. There are many issues.

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Trees are massively beneficial, as in terms of shade, cooling. They are essential. If there is no shade, there is no space virtually useful. In terms of the management of trees, it is a technical Hong Kong problem. There are many different departments managing different trees. It is also a struggle to get good quality trees stock. There are some of the issues that we are facing. We do not know which tree exactly you are talking about but it really depends on the quality of planting and the choice of the location. But it is ridiculous because so many departments managing different trees. There is one section within Development Bureau overseeing all the other departments.

Prof. Melissa Cate Christ:

It is much more complicated from the way to build the sidewalk. The sidewalk is not only for people to walk but also allow more tree planting space. We have so many infrastructures underneath the sidewalk.

Mr. Gavin Coates:

The root space is seriously restricted. While the tree grows, the roots cannot expand horizontally. In many of the footpaths, if you lift-up blocks, you will see the spaghettis of cables underneath. Some trees have historically been planted in where they shouldn’t be in, for example, on top of the utilities. Sometimes, older trees have been damaged by utilities with improper maintenance. Definitely widening the footpaths will not solve all the problems but it will give you more space for planting.

Ms. Gigi Lau:

How can landscape architecture, public space integrate together? We talked a lot on the street level, but I would like to advocate something like our elevated walkways. Why can't we have high rise with trees there? Also seats, etc, multilayered public space.

Ms. Ada Ying-Kay Wong:

Let's stop talking and let's all go out and take action. When we all do one action, people will know that there is at least one group of people who would like to eliminate things instead of adding more.

Ms. Xiaomei Duan:

Guangdong and Hong Kong are so close to each other. We should share our experience more. We hope Hong Kong can be a greener and better city, and always leading China.

Mr. Fred Brown:

It is very important for us to talk to people and to convince people in the Government or District Council, so they can make it or do what they want to do as well. Most people may have great ideas but practicing it is a nightmare. We need to help people get more information and work together. And I think the Government needs some local district persons.

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Thanks and Closing

Ms. Yan-yan Yip Civic Exchange

How many of you feel more energised and more encouraged after today, or the presentation, that we will be able to achieve or transform Hong Kong into a more walkable city in five years’ time? (Some people raised up their hands.) Very encouraged and energised. And probably you are the hardcore people, die-hard fans of creating and transforming Hong Kong into a walkable city.

To a certain extent, I am, or maybe we are, as co-organisers of this event, encouraged to see so many of you still staying here with us at this moment, because it shows that you are concerned about this issue, and you are happy to continue to be engaged in this jointly with us to create and to transform, again, Hong Kong into, not only a walkable city, but use Joseph’s term this morning, a universally accessible city.

Hong Kong is the place that I grew up, and also the place that I was born. I witnessed the changes. It’s densely populated, with limited space, but lots of people. Zhi Ning told us this morning that Hong Kong is number one in the world with the highest density of traffic. Also from Paul’s [Zimmerman] presentation, you see competition between traffic, transport and human beings, the pedestrians. Paul, you told us that sometimes we have luck. We see some good planning here and there. But luck is not always with us, right?

So throughout the whole day, we see presentations. Lots of speakers and panelists, you are telling us that we’ve got so many problems. But actually we do see some examples. For example, The Link. Calvin [Kwan] told us how they revitalise the Tai Yuen Market. And then also Ada [Wong] just told us what she did in West Kowloon, right? And of course where we are here, EKEO, has been doing something to try to create a more liveable area in Hong Kong.

Throughout the day we always heard about political will, right? But then, just now in the panel discussion, we do not think that only political will will be enough. Perhaps we need leadership not just from the top, but also from the district level. Now that we all know the District Councils have so much more money, right? Then we may be able to help them think about how they may want to use that money more wisely, to help us build a more liveable Hong Kong.

Perhaps by that time when we can do walkable city or universally accessible city in Hong Kong, the consultants are interested in comparing the walking speed of Hong Kong people in the busy district. By that time, Hong Kong people can still walk very fast in the busy district. And I hope that in the future, at similar events we will be able to see you again. And then one homework perhaps for all of you: by the end of today, you think about what you can do, perhaps one little

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task to go and at least talk to three of your friends about this issue and try to get this message out. And as what Gavin [Coates] mentioned, ‘reclaim the streets’. Thank you very much.

One final note, I’d like to thank the lunchtime talk co-host, and also the sponsors, supporting organisations, and all of you for your participation again. Thank you.

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Time Contents08:15 – 08:45 Registration08:45 – 09:15 Opening Remarks

(By Mr. Simon Ng, Civic Exchange)Welcome Remarks (By Mr. Chi-Sing Wai, JP, Permanent Secretary for Development (Works), HKSAR Government)Keynote Presentation (By Prof. Anthony Bing-leung Cheung , GBS, JP, Secretary for Transport and Housing, HKSAR Government)

09:15 – 10:45 Session 1: Pedestrian Network Planning (Chaired by Mr. Oren Tatcher, OTC Ltd. )

Effective Pedestrian Planning – Lessons learnt (By Mr. Sam Chow, ARUP)A Multi-Layered City – How do we make it work? (By Mr. Paul Zimmerman, Designing Hong Kong)Universally Accessible Pedestrian Environment (By Mr. Joseph Kwan, UDA Consultants Ltd.)

10:45 – 11:00 Coffee/Tea break11:00 – 12:30 Session 2: Pedestrian Safety

(Chaired by Mr. Cameron MacDonald, Atkins China Ltd.)

Safer and Attractive Streets in Hong Kong – the Future rests on Lower Speed Limits (By Mr. Julian Kwong, Community for Road Safety)The Walkable Urban Environment and Pedestrian Exposure (By Dr. Zhi Ning, City University of Hong Kong)Easing the Way – Improving Pedestrian Movement on Urban Streets (By Mr. Neil Adams, Formerly Transport for London)

12:30 – 13:45 Lunch-time forum (co-hosted with SOW Ideas Company Limited) (Guest Speaker: Dr. Wing-tat Hung Moderator: Mr. Vincent Wong)

13:45 – 15:15 Session 3: Streets as Public Space (Chaired by Prof. Melissa Cate Christ, University of Hong Kong)

Making Walkable Places in Kowloon East (By Mr. Raymond Lee, Energizing Kowloon East Office, Development Bureau)Revitalizing Public Spaces: The Tai Yuen Experience (By Dr. Calvin Kwan, The Link Management Limited)Let’s Reclaim Our Streets! (By Mr. Gavin Coates, Landscape Architect)

15:15 – 15:30 Coffee/Tea break15:30 – 16:45 Panel Discussion

(Moderated by Mr. Simon Ng, Civic Exchange)Mr. Fred Brown, MVAMs. Gigi Lau, 30SGroupMs. Ada Ying-Kay Wong, JP, Hong Kong Institute of Contemporary CultureMs. Xiaomei Duan, Institute for Transportation and Development Policy

16:45 – 17:00 Closing remarks (By Ms. Yan-yan Yip, Civic Exchange)

AppendicesProgramme:

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Mr. Neil Adams is an independent engineer working in Hong Kong and the UK. At Transport for London (TfL), he was Chief Engineer Network Operations, responsible for London’s Urban Traffic Control system. He developed and pioneered new techniques for adapting traffic signals to respond to and reduce pedestrian overcrowding, and was involved at a senior governance level in many high-profile projects designed to improve pedestrian movement and safety.

Mr. Fred Brown is the Honorary Chairman of MVA Asia. He has over 30 years international experience in directing projects and strong technical background in all modes of transport policy, planning, design and implementation including pedestrian planning. Fred also serves as advisor to Governments, Private Investors and operators on infrastructure investment projects and operating systems in Hong Kong and Thailand.

Prof. Melissa Cate Christ is an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Hong Kong. Her design research and practice concentrates on contemporary mechanisms of urban intervention at the juncture of landscape, culture, urbanism, and infrastructure. Prior to teaching at HKU, Melissa was a designer at Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd, where she was the project manager for CityCentre DC, a 10 acre mixed use development in downtown Washington DC. She has also worked as an urban designer at Dutoit, Allsop Hillier, and as an instructor and design critic at the University of Toronto and the University of Washington.

Prof. Anthony Bing-leung Cheung is currently the Secretary for Transport and Housing of HKSAR Government and was the President of The Hong Kong Institute of Education. Before joining the Government, Professor Cheung held a number of public service positions including non-official member of the Executive Council, Chairman of the Consumer Council, member of the Hong Kong Housing Authority and Chairman of its Subsidised Housing Committee, member of the Greater Pearl River Delta Business Council, director of the Hong Kong Mortgage Corporation and member of the Disaster Relief Fund Advisory Committee.

Mr. Sam Chow is a Director Leading the transport consulting group for Arup in the East Asia Region. He has almost 27 years of professional consulting and management experience in transportation planning, master planning and traffic engineering in China, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and India. Sam is a Fellow in The Chartered Institute of Logistics & Transport in Hong Kong and a chartered /professional engineer in Hong Kong, UK and Australia.In recent years, he has been actively leading transport planning projects in the new areas and new towns in China with emphasis on substantiality, low carbon and transit oriented development.

Mr. Gavin Coates is a Landscape Architect with over 20 years’ experience mainly in Hong Kong. In the 1980’s he contributed to key Government projects including Tseung Kwan O infrastructure, various public housing estates, Yuen Long Town Park, and the waterfall area of Hong Kong Park. More recently Gavin has been involved with the design and site supervision of Greening Master Plans instigated by the Civil Engineering and Development Department; requiring skills ranging from city-wide urban planning to detailed planting design and participation in public planting events.

Ms. Xiaomei Duan is the Chief Engineer of the Guangzhou Municipal Engineering Design and Research Institute and Chief Technical Officer of Institute for Transportation Development and Policy. Since graduating from Shanghai’s Tongji University, she has worked on numerous urban transportation projects in China and internationally. In the past ten years, She focused mainly on the Guangzhou BRT, Lanzhou BRT planning and design, NMT improvement projects and green development projects.

Speakers’ & Panelists’ Biographies

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Dr. Wing-tat Hung is an associate professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He has been advocating sustainable transport system with special emphasis on the social and environmental aspects of an efficient transport system. He sits in the Road Safety Research Committee under the Road Safety Council for many years. Road safety in particular the safety of pedestrian and cyclist is one of his major concern.

Dr. Calvin Lee Kwan is currently the Senior Manager (Sustainability) of The Link Management Ltd and was the environmental sustainability project manager for the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He has strong experience in carbon auditing and footprinting, sustainability awareness and promotion, developing climate change strategic action plans and hosting sustainability outreach programs. Calvin also worked in environment and sustainability roles at major companies including Toyota Motors Engineering and Manufacturing North America and Shell Oil Products, US

Mr. Joseph Kwan MH, Architect and Access Consultant is the Founding Director of UDA, Consultants inUniversal Design & Accessibility, and has practiced in Australia, the UK, France and now Hong Kong. He is a Resource Person to the United Nations – Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific on Accessible Built Environment and on Barrier-Free Tourism. He is currently a Consultant to the Asian Development Bank (ADB) on Universal Access to ADB Transport Projects. Joseph is also the Global Chair of ICTA Rehabilitation International and the Chair of the ARCASIA Committee on Social Responsibility.

Mr. Julian Kwong specializes in Road Safety Engineering with training from France and the UK. He is currently a consultant to the Asian Development Bank on highway and expressway safety. His present engagements include drafting of a highway safety design manual for Anhui Province, China and Road Safety Audit and community programs for a variety of road projects. Through the “Community for Road Safety” he founded in 2004, Julian is active in promoting good practices, better policies and improvements to road signage, highway safety and pedestrian safety in Hong Kong. Integration with aesthetics, quality of living and the landscape has always been a major consideration in his work.

Ms. Gigi Lau is a director of the 30SGroup, the deputy convener of the Pound Lane Concern Group and a landscape designer at ACLA. She assisted Prof. Jonathan D Solomon on his book project “Cities without Ground”, a study of 3-dimensional urbanism and worked as a policy researcher for CY Leung, Patrick Lau and Laurence Li on urban policy. Gigi is passionate in advocating for the preservation of historic district and a great diversity of walking experience.

Mr. Raymond Lee is the Head of Energizing Kowloon East Office, Development Bureau. Before taking up this position, he was the Assistant Director of Planning, responsible for territorial planning studies. He is a professional town planner with extensive experience including planning for the old airport site at Kai Tak, review of the Town Planning Ordinance, harbor-front planning and development, boundary closed area and cross-boundary planning, and planning for new development areas in the New Territories. Mr. Lee is currently the Vice-president of the Hong Kong Institute of Planners.

Mr. Cameron MacDonald is an Associate Director of Atkins China Ltd with 20 years of experience in transportation planning in Hong Kong, China, the Middle East, Australia and the UK. He has particular experience in pedestrian planning and the design of transport facilities to promote safe and efficient pedestrian movement. Cameron is currently managing the transport planning support to the Atkins offices in the Asia Pacific Region for various Urban Realm, Masterplanning and Transit Oriented Development projects and is also currently undertaking a Masters Degree in Human Factors (Ergonomics).

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Mr. Simon Ng is the Head of Transport and Sustainability Research of Civic Exchange. His major research interests include sustainable transportation, livable cities, air quality management, and local community planning. Simon is known for his work on ship emissions inventory and control policy in Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta. He is also actively sharing his experience and expertise with policy makers and practitioners in other parts of the world, including Los Angeles, Shanghai and Guangdong.

Dr. Zhi Ning is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Energy and Environment at City University of Hong Kong. He has rich research experience of urban air pollution source emission identification and characterization, and their impact on public health through personal exposure assessment. He is also active in air pollution related technologies development including the R&D of high efficiency electrostatic precipitator, on-road plume chasing and analysis system (OPCAS) and aerosol to hydrosol air sampler (ATHAS) for PM chemistry and toxicity measurements etc.

Mr. Oren Tatcher is Principal of OTC Limited, a Hong Kong-based planning and design firm specializing in transportation facilities and transport-oriented urban master plans. The firm’s work has included planning and design of airports and airport terminals, railway stations, marine transport terminals and intermodal stations in Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan, India, the United Arab Emirates, Mexico, Brazil, Singapore and the Philippines. Mr. Tatcher has also been working closely with various local and international organisations to promote best practice in sustainable transport development, walkability and urban design, primarily in developing countries.Ir Chi-sing Wai obtained his first degree in civil engineering from the University of Hong Kong, and his master degree in transportation engineering from the Purdue University in the United States. He has professional qualifications in civil, structural and geotechnical engineering. Ir Wai joined the Hong Kong Government as an Assistant Engineer in August 1980, and since then his career has been closely associated with the development of Hong Kong’s infrastructure. He has served in the Transport Department, the former Territory Development Department, the Highways Department, and the Works Branch of the former Environment, Transport and Works Bureau. He was the Director of the Highways Department from November 2006 to June 2010 and has been appointed Permanent Secretary for Development (Works) since June 2010.Ms. Ada Ying-Kay Wong is a staunch advocate of creative education, social innovation and cultural development. She is the founder and Hon. Chief Executive of Hong Kong Institute of Contemporary Culture, and the supervisor of HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity which launched the Make A Difference initiative, a continuing platform to groom the next generation of creative leaders and innovative changemakers in Asia. Ada is also the Convenor and Director of The Good Lab, an inspiring co-working space and a collaborative community for social innovation.

Mr. Vincent Wong is the founder of Solution-On-Wheels, a social enterprise dedicated to promoting solution journalism in Asia. Practitioners of solution journalism present social issues through a "solution frame" rather than a "problem frame", focusing on the practical and human elements of social innovation. Solution-On-Wheels is a new type of media using 4G LTE mobile technology and will enable Vincent and his team to conduct community focus groups around town.

Mr. Paul Zimmerman is an elected councilor in the Southern District representing the Pokfulam constituency and CEO of Designing Hong Kong devoted to improving urban planning in Hong Kong under its motto ‘Livable Density’. Paul arrived in Hong Kong in 1984, and received his Certificate for Naturalization as a Chinese National in 2012 and has a Master in Social Science (Economics) from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and a Master of Arts in Transport Policy and Planning from The University of Hong Kong.

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© Civic Exchange, July 2013 The views expressed in this report are those of the authors, and do not necessarily represent the opinions of Civic Exchange.