Among the 33 initiatives in which Lam admitted failure, as they did not happen or have been delayed, were nine key transport policies. The rest included policies related to land, welfare and youth.

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Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam gives last policy address of current term, ending on emotional note

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam gives last policy address of current term, ending on emotional note

The Post studied a list of these initiatives prepared by the Policy Innovation and Coordination Office (PICO), which has helped Lam prepare her annual blueprint since she took office in 2017.

In making the list available to the Post, the office also gave reasons for areas that fell short, placing the blame most frequently on the 2019 social unrest, a lack of support from lawmakers and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Lawmakers and scholars interviewed agreed that these major obstacles not only prevented Lam from delivering on her transport goals, but also hindered governance as a whole.

They also said transport had never been a priority for the Transport and Housing Bureau which struggled to address the city’s severe shortage of homes. They hoped Lam’s plan to split the bureau into two would make a difference.

With six months to go before Hong Kong’s next leader is elected, Lam delivered her longest, most ambitious policy blueprint on October 6, even though she has yet to indicate if she will run for re-election next March.

With Beijing’s overhaul of the city’s electoral system to ensure “patriots” take charge and improve governance, experts said whoever became the next chief executive had to reprioritise policy goals to put transport back on track.

Rail project delays stand out

Experts agreed unanimously that delays in rail projects were the most significant, impactful failures of Lam’s administration.

The Tuen Ma line only opened in June this year after repeated delays, and the cross-harbour Hung Hom-Admiralty section has been pushed back to the first quarter of next year.

The overall project has been beset by problems of shoddy work, repeated delays and cost overruns. Work on the cross-harbour section was affected by signalling system glitches for the connecting East Rail line in September last year.

A source told the Post the cross-harbour section was likely to be delayed yet again as the MTR Corp would not be able to make up for the setbacks caused by the signalling fiasco. MTR Corp CEO Jacob Kam Chak-pui has also hinted at the possibility of another delay.

The corporation is responsible for the design, construction and commissioning of all rail projects in Hong Kong, and also for developing property above or around stations.

The lack of competition had left the government toothless in dealing with project delays and serious incidents involving the rail giant, said Jason Poon Chuk-hung, managing director of construction firm China Technology Corporation, who blew the whistle on a rail project scandal.

6 key takeaways from Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam’s policy address

He said although the firm’s “rail plus property” operating model had been hailed as a success for generating lucrative profits, it provided the operator no incentives to deliver projects on schedule.

And despite major delays on key projects, the government had no choice but to continue granting the MTR Corp the development rights in new sites, he added.

Michael Tien Puk-sun, former chairman of the Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation, said the situation was made worse when the government turned a blind eye to the monopoly of contractors used by the MTR Corp.

Citing the example of Leighton (Asia), the main contractor for the scandal-plagued Sha Tin to Central rail link project, he said: “Its representatives never attended Legislative Council meetings and remained uncooperative with regards to the government’s queries, but it has become too big to fail.”

Leighton and three contractors were suspended from bidding for government contracts for between three months and a year but Tien said the punishments were “too lenient” as the company already had numerous projects in hand.

Still no electronic road pricing

Authorities have talked about testing electronic road pricing in congested Central district from as long ago as the 1980s, and Lam revisited it after becoming leader.

She pledged in her 2018 policy address to press ahead with it, and early the following year, transport officials started gathering views from relevant stakeholders, such as Central and Western District Council.

Under a proposal to reduce traffic by 15 per cent, motorists were supposed to pay to drive along 14 streets in the heart of Central.

However, just before the anti-government protests broke out in 2019, the district council passed a motion opposing the road pricing scheme and urged the administration to revise the proposal.

PICO said consultations on the scheme “took longer than expected”.

Hung, the retired associate professor in Polytechnic University’s department of civil and environmental engineering, said the stalemate highlighted entrenched problems of accountability in government going all the way back to the system put in place by the city’s first chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa.

“Civil servants have the expertise to formulate transport policies, but the appointed principal officials often fail to deliver them effectively as they lack expertise in the area,” he said.

Hung said road pricing had been implemented successfully in cities such as London, Singapore and Milan and remained “the only way out” for Hong Kong, where it was almost impossible to expand roads in heavily built-up urban areas.

No action to end city’s taxi woes

Numerous solutions have been tossed up to deal with a host of problems besetting Hong Kong’s much-criticised taxi industry, but little has been done.

Stiffer penalties for malpractices have not been introduced, and a franchised taxi scheme to improve choice for passengers has been scrapped due to lack of support in the Legislative Council.

In her 2020 policy address, Lam said the Transport and Housing Bureau was preparing to get tough on errant cabbies with heavier penalties, including a demerit point scheme for flouting a list of offences.

Some taxi groups balked at the proposal, insisting “minor misbehaviours” should not result in demerit points.

A bill was introduced in April last year to allow three franchisees to operate about 600 ride-hailing premium taxis, but the bureau scrapped it last October after taking into account difficulties faced by cabbies amid the economic downturn and the views of the community and Legco’s bills committee.

Several other transport-related initiatives also did not come to pass.

Legco did not support a proposal to rationalise cross-harbour tolls. A plan for short-haul shuttles in the New Territories stalled on a failure to identify suitable vehicles and routes. A plan to extend service hours of Shenzhen Bay Port for cargo could not proceed because of the coronavirus pandemic, PICO said.

The government blamed the 2019 social unrest, chaos in Legco and the pandemic for the delay in retrofitting buses to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions.

But Ben Chan Han-pan, deputy chairman of Legco’s transport panel, said transport policies had never been the priority of the bureau, as Lam’s administration was more troubled by the pressing housing shortage.

Michael Tien said the government’s weak supervision of MTR projects reflected the way oversight was dispersed across various departments and two bureaus – transport and housing, and development.

For example, he said, the Highways Department under the Transport and Housing Bureau was responsible for monitoring the overall progress of projects, but the Development Bureau’s Electrical and Mechanical Services Department followed up on signalling systems and its Buildings Department oversaw problems of land subsidence and settlement.

“From our observations, there has never been effective coordination between the two bureaus,” he said.

In her recent policy address, Lam proposed creating a new transport bureau – splitting the existing one – which would focus on infrastructure, public transport services and traffic management.

Jason Poon, who is also chief analyst of newly formed policy advocacy group Hong Kong Strategic Solutions, said breaking the MTR Corp’s monopoly was more important than restructuring the government.

He said the government should open bidding for new rail projects to overseas operators. “Even a complex rail system like the one in Tokyo is being run by various operators. Obstacles in connectivity should never be an excuse,” he said.

But lawmaker Chan, from the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, said creating the new bureau was a crucial step for officials to lay a solid transport road map for the proposed Northern Metropolis project in the New Territories, a centrepiece of Lam’s policy address.

“Even if she has the most brilliant ideas for a long-term housing solution, it could take 30 years to shift jobs and people to the north. So the government needs to act now to solve the traffic congestion problem in urban areas,” he said.

Chan said he hoped the new bureau could refocus on developing smart mobility solutions, as Hong Kong lagged far behind mainland Chinese cities such as Hangzhou in terms of using artificial intelligence to plan more efficient use of existing transport systems.

Hung, the retired scholar, said he hoped the new transport bureau would be led by the right person. “We need an expert to take the lead and execute out-of-the-box solutions,” he said.

Additional reporting by Cannix Yau