There’s a good piece in today’s Standard about the perils of being a pedestrian in Hong Kong:
Poor urban planning has turned “world class” Hong Kong into a “pedestrian-hostile city”, which last year led to the deaths of 202 people, says a Hong Kong University professor. “There are more people on public transport here in Hong Kong than anywhere else in the world”, Bill Barron, associate professor at the Hong Kong University’s Centre of Urban Planning and Environmental Management, said.
“That makes most of us pedestrians. Ironically, very little attention is paid to that”, he said. “Whenever the government has to make a choice between people and vehicles, it always prioritises vehicles”.
It has to be said that there are several areas of Hong Kong which are relatively good from the pedestrian point of view. It is possible to get around much of the Sheung Wan/Central/Wan Chai area by walking through shopping centres and using pedestrian bridges, though it does rather which direction you want to go.
Likewise, places such as Tsuen Wan, Tuen Mun and Sha Tin have vast networks of inter-connected shopping centres, though it is very easy to get totally lost, and frustrating when you can see somewhere at street level but no apparent way to get there!
In much of the rest of Hong Kong you have to take pot luck. There are sometimes reasonably pleasant walkways (and cycle routes) by the side of the road, but equally there are places where barriers have been built to prevent you crossing the road at street level and the bridges have no cover against rain or sun. Obviously it is tempting to try to cross the road even though you are not supposed to do so.
Poor urban planning encourages jaywalking, which is a root cause of many city accidents – and rocketing government compensation payouts. “Hong Kong is simply a pedestrian-hostile city”, Barron said.
I’m not sure that I’d agree that Hong Kong is a pedestrian-hostile city. Almost every city in the world has the same problem of trying to reconcile the needs of motorists and pedestrians, and there aren’t any easy answers. In London, the ‘congestion charge’ has cut traffic and Trafalgar Square is now a much safer place to walk, but the problem is much bigger than that. In Hong Kong, the closure of several streets in Causeway Bay (at certain times of the day) has been a success, and the new network of tunnels in Tsim Sha Tsui will make that area more pleasant.
There is something of a dilemma here (as Bill Barron points out), in that although car owners are a minority in Hong Kong, most of us do use the roads – as passengers in buses, minibuses and taxis. The drivers of the latter two forms of transport must represent the greatest threat to pedestrians (I have lost count of the number of times I have watched taxis in particular go through red lights at pedestrian crossings). The sheer number of buses is also a problem in some places, and poor planning has created a further problem where buses are forced to cut across several lanes to reach bus stops.
One small bonus in Hong Kong is that we don’t have many cyclists, and most of them (wisely) stick to the dedicated cycle paths. Cyclists may complain about car drivers, but pedestrians live in fear of cyclists!
According to The Standard, pedestrians do sometimes get prosecuted:
In the first three months of this year, 3,600 jaywalkers faced prosecution and another 15,000 were given verbal cautions. The fine for jaywalking is between HK$500 and HK$1,000 – less than that for a litterbug.
The funniest country for this is Germany. A few years ago I had the misfortune to spend a week working in Bonn, a sleepy town that was then the capital. A group of us were walking along in the evening and came to a junction which had a pedestrian crossing. As there was absolutely no traffic anywhere to be seen, we crossed the road without waiting for the lights to change. This prompted a local woman to remonstrate loudly with us for being so undisciplined. That’s Germany for you!
Ordinary Gweilo 