LEGCO QUESTION No. 1
[For Oral Reply]

Asked By : Hon CHENG Kai-nam Date of Sitting : 9 September 1998
Replied By : Secretary for Transport

Question : It is learnt that the Town Planning Board has agreed to designate land in Stanley for the construction of a multi-storey car park in order to solve the problem of insufficient parking spaces in the district. Will the Government inform this Council :

  1. of the estimated earliest date at which the carpark will operate; and

  2. whether there is any contingency plan for dealing with the difficulties (such as the problem of delay in the timeframe caused by land resumption procedures) which are expected to arise in the course of taking forward the construction project of the carpark?

Reply :

Madam President,

Present indication is that the existing provision of 220 parking spaces at Stanley is adequate to meet demand during weekdays but there is an acute shortage of about 300 parking spaces during weekends and holidays. The problem is particularly serious during the summer months.

Construction of the Ma Hang public housing development is in good progress and is scheduled for completion in late 1999. It will provide an additional 116 parking spaces to the Stanley area. The Government has plans to meet the remaining shortfall by providing 200 parking spaces at a multi-storey car park at the existing Stanley bus terminus site.

This multi-storey car park project was gazetted in the draft Stanley Outline Zoning Plan in July 1994. The project was held up because of a large number of objections received, principally on grounds of the visual and environmental impact of the project. The Town Planning Board gave consideration to these objections during May 1995 and November 1997. In January 1998, the amended OZP without the multi-storey car park, was gazetted as required by section 6 of the Town Planning Ordinance. However, upon the expiry of the exhibition period, 23 objections against the deletion of the multi-storey car park were received. Having reconsidered the issue between February and June 1998, the Town Planning Board reverted its earlier decision on 12 June and decided to retain the multi-storey car park in the OZP. In accordance with section 8 of the Town Planning Ordinance, a submission on the draft OZP including the multi-storey car park project together with all the unwithdrawn objections will be made to the CE in Council. This will be done towards the end of the year.

The original plan was for the Stanley bus terminus site to be put to land sale in 1996/97 with reprovision of the public transport interchange at ground level and to build a multi-storey car park above by 1999/2000. However the latest assessment of the Lands Department is that the project may not be commercially viable. If this is the case, the multi-storey car park may have to be pursued as a Government project and compete for funding. It is difficult to pin-point an exact date for the completion of the multi-storey car park at this stage. Normally, it will take four to five years to complete a project of this scale.

To address the concern of some of the local residents on the impact of the multi-storey car park, special attention will be paid to the design of the project to ensure that it will blend in with the environment.

In case the multi-storey car park project cannot be taken forward for whatever reasons, the Government has plans to increase car park provision at alternative sites including 80 spaces at Stanley Village Road, 40 spaces at Hoi Fung Path and 25 spaces near St. Stephens College Preparatory School.