‘Hong Kong should look at economic impact of northbound travel amid driver scheme’

Ip, convenor of the key decision-making Executive Council and also a legislator, said the data could provide valuable insight into the trend of Hong Kong consumers increasingly choosing to visit the mainland.

“More and more people are heading north and that is having an impact on our economy, as I have heard that the business of restaurants north of Sha Tin has been very poor,” she told the panel.

“Will you ask the government economist to run an analysis on what impact [the trend] has on us, and how Hong Kong should transform its economy to cope with it? The bridge should provide a lot of data, such as the types and time periods of vehicles coming in and out.”

The growing number of Hongkongers spending their weekends on the mainland has provided added pressure to the city’s economy. Retail sales in April were down 14 .7 per cent compared with a year ago, marking a second consecutive month of contraction after a 7 per cent drop in March.

Edward Mak Chun-yu, deputy secretary for transport and logistics, agreed to make use of the vehicle data by working with other departments.

He said cross-border connectivity was intended to facilitate two-way exchanges and benefit the Greater Bay Area as a whole.

The bay area is Beijing’s plan to link Hong Kong, Macau and nine southern Chinese cities into an hi-tech economic powerhouse.

The motorist travel scheme opened for applications on June 1 last year, allowing residents to drive into Guangdong province via the mega bridge with permits valid for up to a year.

Authorities said its introduction had contributed to the increased traffic on the world’s longest sea crossing.

Mak said an average of 11,657 vehicles crossed the bridge every day in both directions last month, with Hong Kong vehicles taking part in the scheme accounting for about 36 per cent of all traffic.

During the Dragon Boat Festival weekend earlier this month, motorists returning from Zhuhai were slowed down by long queues on the bridge, with legislator Gary Zhang Xinyu himself saying he was stuck in traffic for four hours.

“Based on our first-hand observation, we could see that there were no issues with the capacity of the bridge at all, and there was not much waiting when returning to the Hong Kong side, which means there was a bottleneck on the part leaving the mainland,” Zhang told the panel.

Mak said one explanation for the heavy traffic on the Zhuhai side was because the one facility handled vehicles heading to both Macau and Hong Kong. Another reason was that all passengers had to exit their vehicles and walk through the mainland checkpoint, resulting in significant waits at drop-off and pickup areas.

“There is nothing we can do because the national policy does not allow passengers to be checked in vehicles. We can only continue to contemplate solutions under this premise,” he said.

Zhuhai authorities were adding more private-car only clearance lanes and working on a solution to share real-time information on waiting periods, Mak said.

He noted statistics from Hong Kong’s Immigration Department showed a traveller could usually be cleared at a checkpoint on the Hong Kong side within 30 minutes during peak periods.