The Multinational Ding-Ding

The ding-ding, Hong Kong’s 105-year-old tramway is now a multinational asset. Yesterday, local conglomerate Whalf Holdings sold 50 percent of its shares in Hongkong Tramways to the French transportation company Veolia, which retains the option to buy the remaining half. “Operating the light rail system in Hong Kong will give us the knowledge and expertise in mainland China. That’s strategically why we chose to start in Hong Kong,” said the head of Veolia’s new Chinese division. While I’m not sure that’s a very good strategy (what does running a century-old British-style tramway in Hong Kong teach you about operating modern light rail in, say, Chongqing?), it does raise some questions about the future of a beloved piece of Hong Kong transport.

So far, Veolia has promised not to make any changes to the tramway’s current operations. Although they are much slower than the MTR, trams remain extremely popular, largely because they cost just $2 (about 30 Canadian cents) to ride. I’m willing to bet that the experience of rattling through the canyons of Wan Chai or North Point, wind rushing through open windows, has something to do with it too. After all, the tram is the very opposite of the sleek, air-conditioned MTR, and it can often be more enjoyable to ride than the loud, dingy buses that serve local routes on the Hong Kong side of the harbour. Hongkong Tramways makes about $150 million from fares, which hasn’t changed for several years, but the revenue from advertising on trams and tram stations has increased from $20 million to $50 million since 2004. Even considering the poor state of the economy, it seems almost inevitable that advertising will play an ever more prominent part in the tramway’s operation.

While there may not be any changes to the current tram line, Veolia will spearhead a proposal to run a spur line along the newly-reclaimed Central waterfront, from the Star Ferry pier to the convention centre in Wan Chai. It’s a great idea, one that could help offset the decline in Star Ferry ridership and give the public better access to waterfront open space. The only problem is that the guiding principle behind the new line would be nostalgia: the rolling stock would consist of custom-made replicas of the various types of trams that have served Hong Kong through the decades. In other words, instead of a proper, serious tram line along the waterfront, we’d have a tram better-suited to running a loop around the perimeter of Hong Kong Disneyland. I can easily envision a Peak Tram-style line that caters to tourists and charges far more than any normal transit user would be willing to pay. Hong Kong’s tramway is nostalgic enough; any new investment should be focused on making it more efficient and useful to the public.

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Riding the Light Rail

Compared to Hong Kong or Kowloon, the northwest part of the New Territories feels like a city apart, an earthier, more workaday place. Much of that has to do with its geography and urban development, a low-rise sprawl of villages, farms and subdivisions that runs the length of a wide, flat valley, with two highrise town centres on either end: Yuen Long and Tuen Mun. But part of it also comes from the spine of area’s transportation network, a unique light rail system built in the 1980s.

Although the northwest New Territories is the longest-settled part of Hong Kong, with some villages dating back more than 700 years, it was only in the 1970s that its population began to expand in earnest. After the success of Tsuen Wan, Shatin and other early New Towns—highrise satellite cities built to contain Hong Kong’s swelling population—Yuen Long and Tuen Mun were identified as two more nodes for development. There was just one problem: access. The road network simply wouldn’t be capable of absorbing the kind of population density government planners envisioned, so they decided some kind of rail system would be necessary. Construction began in 1985 and finished just three years later.

I paid a visit to Yuen Long last December. Riding the light rail was one of the goals of my trip. What I encountered was a late-generation light rail system (like the C-Train in Calgary or MAX in Portland, rather than the streetcars of Toronto or tramway of Hong Kong Island) with nine lines serving 68 stations. It boggles the mind to think that a network that would form the backbone of any medium-sized city’s public transit system is completely forgotten by most people in Hong Kong, except those who use it.

You can tell by riding the light rail that it is a purely local mode of transportation. After boarding at the Yuen Long West Rail station (a stop on a new metro line that opened in 2003, partly to reduce congestion on the light rail), we passed through Yuen Long town centre, picking up passengers bound for the villages and housing estates strung out along the route. By the time we reached the outskirts of Tuen Mun, the train was packed with teenagers in school uniforms and more old people than I’d ever seen on any single bus or MTR train. The journey took a little over thirty minutes from end to end. Nobody seemed in too much of a hurry.

Riding the C-Train

Waiting for a train at Centre Street station

Afternoon on a Dalhousie-bound train

Door button on a 1981-vintage train

Purgatory on the C-Train

“No Name” by Jason Mark. Digital composite

I first met Jason Mark when he came to live in my apartment. Actually, I should be more precise—I met him when he came to sublet my apartment. I was living in a cheap studio on Park Avenue near Fairmount, pleasantly appointed but also quite small and dark. When the opportunity arose to move up the street into a bright two-bedroom place with my girlfriend, I put out a call for subletters. Jason answered and, not long thereafter, he settled in with a few boxes of stuff and some leftover furniture I have yet to reclaim from him.

Jason is an artist, born and raised in Saskatchewan, where he received a degree in fine arts from the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. When he moved into my old apartment, he set up an easle in the corner of the kitchen and hung some of his paintings on the walls. It wasn’t until last week that I took a closer look at his art, though, and I was surprised to find a lot of public transit imagery and themes of cultural confusion and hybridity.

“Purgatory.” Oil on canvas

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O-Train Follies

Recently-elected Ottawa mayor Larry O’Brien and his new council narrowly decided in a vote at City Hall yesterday to alter the city’s proposed North-South light rail line. In a move to “fix, not nix” the LRT project, O’Brien and company decided to keep most of the proposed route intact, but discard the downtown stretch. As was the original plan for the old proposal, construction on the new route will begin immediately. O’Brien recommended that an Environmental Assessment begin for a rapid transit tunnel underneath the downtown core; a process that could take up to three years to complete.

Only three weeks into his new job as Mayor, multimillionaire O’Brien and the City were under legal pressure by the LRT contractors of Siemens/PCL/Dufferin to begin construction on the route. The City would have faced a minimum $60-million lawsuit had construction on the project not begun by December 15th. O’Brien said that he would use the estimated $70-million in savings from the discarded downtown alignment to improve rapid transit in other areas of the city and to move forward with the proposed East-West light rail line.

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