Lawmaker urges expanded booking-free travel period for northbound vehicles

Chairman of the Legislative Council's Panel on Transport Ben Chan Han-pan urges authorities to expand booking-free travel periods for the "Northbound Travel for Hong Kong Vehicles" scheme, following the recent extension of the policy. 

Under the current arrangement, bookings are not required for vehicles traveling to Guangdong Province via the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge (HZMB) under the Scheme on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Speaking on a radio program, Chan suggested expanding the exemption to include other non-peak weekdays or nighttime hours.

He praised the scheme's popularity over the past few years, as the Guangdong provincial government announced an extension of the policy for another five years until 2031.

However, Chan highlighted chronic weekend and holiday traffic congestion at the HZMB Zhuhai Port due to a lack of customs clearance counters, and urged mainland authorities to allocate more resources to ease the bottleneck.

Ringo Lee Yiu-pui, honorary life president of the Hong Kong, China Automobile Association, welcomed the scheme's five-year extension, noting that the policy has accumulated valuable operational experience since its launch.

Out of Hong Kong's roughly 500,000 private cars, 140,000 are already registered for the scheme. Lee estimates that the extension will drive the number of registered vehicles to over 200,000 in the coming years, accounting for nearly half of the city’s total private cars.

To accommodate this expected surge, Lee urged the government to resolve the severe holiday and weekend congestion at the Zhuhai Port in the short term and to introduce more Guangdong cities to Hong Kong drivers in the future.

For the long term, Lee advocated for the alignment of cross-border vehicle inspections, traffic systems, and driving penalty procedures. 

He also suggested studying the feasibility of a joint clearance system, allowing drivers and passengers to be processed together without leaving the car, to significantly accelerate the crossing procedure.

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