More buses for colony
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AN INCREASE of 40 per cent, from 835 to 1170, is to be made in the double-deck bus fleet of the China Motor Bus Company of Hong Kong in the next 30 months. This will enable eight new routes to be introduced in the busy Eastern district, two of them shortly.
Traffic congestion is causing severe problems for the company and the Government. Ony six out of every ten scheduled journeys in the Eastern district were actually made in October. A journey that took 40 minutes during the morning peak period a few years ago now takes 65 minutes.
Buses, minibuses and trams account for only a quarter of the vehicles in the Eastern district, but they carry threequarters of the people — about 1.3m a day.
The Hong Kong Government is considering various ways of reducing traffic -congestion and popularising public transport. A decision will be made shortly on whether to proceed with a light railway employing vehicles 50 per cent greater in both speed and passenger capacity than the present trams.