Hong Kong Committed to Lagging Behind

30/03/2016

barrysays

In 1983 the Hong Kong Government announced its intention to introduce bold new technology called “Electronic Road Pricing” (ERP) to the Territory to tackle road congestion in urban areas and implemented a successful pilot scheme over the next 2 years. Subsequently the innovation was dropped; meanwhile Singapore forged ahead and implemented its own scheme by 1989. ERP raised its head again 1995 with recommendations to implement a scheme in Central District before 2006 to meet traffic growth projections; nothing happened. London implemented its scheme in 2003 and Hong Kong undertook another study in 2006, yet again confirming the viability of ERP. Thirty three years after that first positive trial, Hong Kong is again looking to implement ERP and is currently going through yet another public engagement exercise. In the meantime the human genome has been mapped, vehicles have landed on Mars and the internet has revolutionised the world.  

The Hong Kong Government released "Public Engagement Document" on Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) and the upcoming pilot project in central. Image: erphk.hk

​Technological change is happening at an unprecedented rate. Governments are struggling to keep up in such a climate, where Uber are facing a staggering number of lawsuits and unmanned aircraft (drones) are flocking to the skies in a seemingly unregulated environment. Predicting, preparing for and regulating tomorrow’s world is going to become ever more important for governments if they are to harness the opportunities of the 21st Century technology boom in reshaping our lives and cities.

At this time it would appear that the days of ownership of a private motor vehicle for urban dwellers could be numbered and especially so for vehicles using the internal combustion engine. Google says autonomous cars will be available "relatively soon" and people will accept them in their lives faster than some observers have expected[1]. Baidu plan to put commercial, self-driving cars on the roads by 2018. Is the Hong Kong Government planning for this change and how will ERP deal with it?

Baidu's self-driving car has hit the road. Image: wired.com

Autonomous vehicles are going to radically change how we get around, and as they become commonplace in our streets, we’ll need to make modest changes to our infrastructure and program these cars to behave as predictably as possible, whilst teaching the public new ways to interact with them. Intersections and stop lights will need to change, because cars will have the ability to navigate through them effectively, without hitting other cars on the road. Removing the signals and allowing the autonomous vehicles to pass through on their own would in theory make everything faster.

Cities around the world do not stand still. Many European centres have been restricting access to their downtown areas for decades, implementing pedestrianisation, time restricted servicing, conservation zones and shared space schemes, all aimed at progressively slowing traffic speeds in centres. In London for instance these interventions have reduced the effective capacity of the road network with the stated aim of improving the urban environment, increasing road safety and prioritising public transport, pedestrian and cycle traffic.

Pedestrian giving priority at raised junction in London. Image: BWPI

Self-driving cars bring many promises like fewer accidents, smarter routing and potentially more efficient use of public space. But unless vehicles are shared, we could well see the potential for an increase in the number of cars on our streets. Certain demographic groups that would not have been able to drive traditional motor vehicles, such as children, the elderly, or the disabled, might now have access to private autonomous vehicles, encouraging a more car-centric lifestyle!

“On-demand ride sourcing systems with appropriately sized vehicles are the key to realising autonomy and freedom without everyone having a car in their garage,” says Don MacKenzie, assistant professor for the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of Washington[1]. “The size of the vehicle can be matched to the needs of each specific trip, so there’s no more energy wasted on moving around a five- to eight-passenger vehicle just to transport one person.”

Google unveiled an early construction of a new prototype vehicle in 2014. It’s designed from the ground up to be fully self-driving. Image: google.com

Right now, companies such as Google, Audi, and Mercedes-Benz are testing the cars in a small number of cities to demonstrate they can be safer than human drivers. They also must figure out what level of risk is acceptable to both government regulators and a potentially sceptical public.[2] Car crashes kill 1.3 million people every year. Safe autonomous cars will save many lives, and make transportation affordable and more convenient. But neither automakers nor technology companies can realize this vision alone. It will take the efforts of government and community.

Humanity has regularly made these kinds of shift before. The 19th Century rise of railways gave citizens a faster and safer mode of transportation than the coach and horse and in so doing transformed society. The 20th Century brought the motor car and aircraft, but we had to learn how to behave around trains, planes and automobiles. Undoubtedly computer driven cars will be far safer than human driven cars. But just as trains are different than horses, we should recognize that computer driven cars are different from human driven cars, and predict novel ways to both safely and efficiently incorporate them into our lives.

Warning flags were initially used in front of motor vehicles. Image: Guardian

Smart cities are not just about technology; they are about sustainable economic development and the promotion of a high life quality through excelling in multiple key areas; economy, mobility, environment, people, living, and government. Information and Communications Technology (ICT) can help make these systems more efficient but so too can implementation of simple management concepts. ERP is designed to reduce traffic into certain areas by charging for the privilege and can no doubt be to some degree effective, however the potential benefits of ERP are meaningless without the context of other capacity reduction measures which can be implemented more easily and at limited cost to the public at large, as witnessed in London.

​​Such trends overseas continue towards streets dedicated to wider public use solutions such as dedicated bus and cycle lanes, shared streets and pedestrianisation schemes. Not only are new roads rarely being built, but existing streets in urban areas are being torn up, narrowed, greened and redefined. Autonomous vehicles already have the ability to add a whole new parameter to the nature of public space in urban centres, allowing a complete transformation of “the road” into safely, non regulated, travelled space between buildings. 

Central-WanChai Bypass-Tunnel (Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter Section) Image: www.csci.com

With the completion of the Central - Wanchai by-pass, through traffic will be able to avoid the congestion of Central District, leaving just destination traffic. How many of those parked vehicles are essential rather than taking advantage of ample on-street parking, minimal meter fees and low/no enforcement? Take away the on street-parking in the district and the generation of a large number of private vehicle trips to Central will have to disappear. On-street parking is hostile to pedestrians and is provided at the expense of other, more productive space investments. Where urban density is high, such as in Central District, parking is extremely capital intensive, making its cost substantial. Most of all, the provision of parking tacitly subsidizes automobile ownership since cars are parked most of the time and ownership is easier if a car can be cheaply and reliably stored when it is not being driven.

Hong Kong needs to follow the example of  leading world cities by improving the efficient use of street space by first reducing trip generation rather than increasing vehicle capacity. Possible measures include removal of on-street parking; off-peak hour loading and unloading restrictions; increased meter parking charges; increased levels of traffic penalties; increased resources applied to enforcement; wider footpath areas and pedestrianisation; as well as introduction of IT in enforcement.

With fewer parked vehicles, taxis, ride-share vehicles and autonomous vehicles should be able to operate more efficiently, making their availability more prevalent and reinforcing the reduced need for other private vehicles.  Will we still need ERP? Possibly, but not perhaps in the form currently being promulgated. It should be considered as just one part of a multi-pronged approach of street management and urban design reconfigurations. It should be programmed as part of a bigger ITC picture of traffic management. It should not be thought of as a standalone solution for traffic reduction.

Urban space inefficiently used by parked vehicles in Causeway Bay. Image: BWPI

Urban transport is at a critical juncture of change, with autonomous vehicles about to revolutionise potential use of urban space and ITC innovation radically changing real time information access and management.  Experts assess the period of mass introduction of autonomous vehicles on our streets to be as early as 2020 and 2025 at the most conservative. As such the anticipated programmed roll out of ERP appears to be isolated from the technological landscape of the times. Singapore commissioned ERP in 1998, London 2003 and Gothenburg 2007,  suggesting that Hong Kong has probably missed the window of opportunity for a 20th Century traffic control measure.

Should our government not be grasping the chance to make Central a truly innovative district, user-ready for autonomous vehicles with next generation urban space to match? It’s going to happen somewhere and “Asia’s World Cities” will be queuing up in the next few years to be the first to claim creation of ICT generated, pedestrian friendly, autonomous vehicle serviced urban centres, capable of attracting leading young talents to their high quality, ICT managed living environments. It may well be that ERP forms a part of that autonomous future, in making Hong Kong a world leader again, but we cannot tell from the current proposals and disappointingly I suspect no grand vision for the city actually exists.  So will it be Singapore, Seoul or Shenzhen that first starts to plan its streets for the 21st Century smart city?

Barry Wilson is a Landscape Architect, urbanist and university lecturer. His practice, Barry Wilson Project Initiatives, has been tackling urbanisation issues in Hong Kong and China for over 20 years. (www.initiatives.com.hk). ​

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Abu Dhabi police use a drone to resecue a stranded window cleaner. Image: urban drones.com

The number of vehicles in Hong Kong increased by 30% from 524 000 in 2003 to 681,000 in 2013.
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During the same period, the average car journey speed in urban areas dropped by about 11% from 25.6 km/h in 2003 to 22.7 km/h in 2013.
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Congestion in Causeway Bay. Image: youtube

​In the US, car sales have decreased year on year since peaking in 1986 at almost 11.5 million.

25 years on, annual sales are roughly half that number[1] 

The trend can be expected to continue despite the ever growing population.

A shared street in Tokyo. Image: BWPI

Car journey speeds on some major traffic corridors in Hong Kong, such as Des Voeux Road West, are recorded to be at or lower than 10km/h during weekday morning peak hours.

​This is not much faster than the average walking speed of an adult at 4 to 5 km/h.

Patterson street pedestrainisation. Image: BWPI

The London Congestion Charge is an £11.50 daily charge for driving a non-exempt vehicle within the designated charging zone between 07:00 and 18:00, Monday to Friday.

Pre-booking must be made, with a penalty of between £65 and £195 levied for non-payment.

Enforcement is primarily based on automatic number plate recognition (ANPR).
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Payment can be made on-line in advance. There are a range of exemptions and discounts available to certain vehicles and individuals.

Reference:

​[1] Ron Medford, director of safety for Google's Self-Driving Cars program and former deputy director of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

[2] WardsAuto.com/data-center

[3] Transportation Research: Part A - Policy and Practice ISSN: 0965-8564
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[4]http://www.pressherald.com/2016/03/17/autonomous-vehicles-still-road-u-s/