Category: HZM Bridge
Mui Wo home prices set to soar, says CBRE
Mui Wo property prices are set to rise sharply, a senior Hong Kong real estate figure predicts.
Kam Hung-yu, a Hong Kong managing director at global estate giant CBRE and a former president of of the Hong Kong Institute of Surveyors, predicts a major hike in residential valuations.
Writing in the Economic Journal he says the Housing Authority will start selling its new Mui Wo apartments in August. Mui Wo prices currently are at around $7000-$8000 psf, but after subsidies this will fall to as low as HK$5000.
“Some Hong Kong people believe the location is not attractive because it is too far [from the city],” he wrote. But he says citizens who qualify for the HA ‘green form’ subsidy should genuinely consider it. “This most likely is a housing market with very strong potential to rise in value,” he wrote. Continue reading
Rethinking Lantau development
Highlights from submission to the Development Bureau (full submission here).
No Vision, No Data, No Conservation
The decision-making process on Lantau’s future appears to be explicitly designed to exclude community input. From day one LanDAC membership has been almost wholly drawn from the real estate, tourist and logistics industries, along with government political supporters and appointees. The public rightly doubts the genuineness of this ‘consultation.’
The government plan offers no vision for the island: what will it be like to visit, live or work in Lantau in 2026, 2036 or beyond? The report doesn’t say. At the same time it tries to micro-manage tourist development in ways that are counter-productive. Continue reading
Another bridge problem: 7 piles replaced
Yet another problem has emerged on the troubled Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge project, with the Highways Department confirming seven piles have been replaced.
The Apple Daily reported Sunday that a contractor had replaced seven large-diameter piles, each tens of meters long, at its own cost.
The name of the contractor, the reasons for the replacement work and the exact location were not clear, although one of the replaced piles is for the artificial island that will host the boundary crossing facility next to Chek Lap Kok. The 3m diameter pile had been buried to a depth of 60 or 70 meters. Continue reading
So the bridge isn’t going to help Lantau tourism
It seems even the boosters of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge don’t think it will help the local tourism industry.
The SCMP has run two slightly panicked pieces on the pending opening of Shanghai Disneyland and just how badly that might hurt our own temple to the Mouse.
A long feature on Saturday asked if the two cities can “share the spoils?” Yet in the hefty list of compelling features at the local Disney site – we’re talking Iron Man Experience and Fairy Tale Forest here – no one has thought to mention the bridge.
Deaths, injuries have delayed Macau bridge by more than a year
Industrial accidents on the Macau bridge project have killed six workers and delayed the project by more than a year, according to local news site HK01.
The Highways Dept has attributed delays to labour shortages and the uncertain supply of materials, but the rising toll of injury could be the biggest factor of all.
Source: Wikipedia
According to HK01, the project has been shut down as a result of injuries and safety issues for 439 days. As well as the six deaths, 129 workers have been injured since construction began in 2011. Continue reading
The boondoggle infinite loop
For once it was not just Lantau people fretting about our transport problems. This past weekend we had not one but two accidents which threw the spotlight on Lantau and our fragile connections to the world. Plus one excellent irony – of that more later.
The Sunday evening accident, where a returning Macau hydrofoil struck an object off the Sokos, was lucky not to involve any life-threatening injuries. Reportedly the object was a marine fender tyre. For anyone who has strolled the garbage-strewn Fan Lau beach nearby that’s no surprise.
As a sailing master told the SCMP, such accidents are probably unavoidable in Hong Kong’s less than pristine waters. It won’t get any better off Lantau’s coast when the Environment Dept starts shipping 12,000 tonnes of household waste in and out of Shek Kwu Chau daily, but hey, let’s not see that as a negative. Continue reading
Macau bridge could be the biggest fail of them all
Photo: James Wong (Creative Commons)
More evidence that the HK-Macau bridge is shaping to be an even bigger disaster than the other budget-busting SAR mega-projects.
Howard Winn (the former SCMP Lai See editor) reports that in the rush to get the project completed the Highways Department has been cutting corners. It’s been trying to construct the border crossing on reclaimed land that is not yet ready for construction.
“The problem is that once again Hong Kong has allowed itself to be bullied into building this too quickly”, said one experienced engineering consultant. In the past Hong Kong has left reclaimed land to settle for between 5-15 years before building on it. “The problem with the [border crossing] is that it hasn’t been left long enough and it is still settling.” Engineers are still considering what do about the problem.
