Half of HK Tramways sold to Veolia?!
半壁電車售法資 倡建海濱新線 舊電車化移動博物館 – Yahoo! 新聞: “”
Oh my freaking god – why would they do that?! Granted, what their original owner Wharf said about the business’ limited room for expansion is true – but HK tram is such a symbol of HK that it seems absolutely taboo to sell it to a French company – not to mention a failing French company! (Who cares how many transportation system they are running in the world, all I care is whether they are run well and for all I know, they are not. Just look at Sweden’s train to Kiruna and Melbourne’s train!)
As fantastic as putting a tram line on the harbour front sounds *think Budapest!*, what is Veolia thinking when they proposed expanding the tram system at the harbour front from Central to Wan Chai. Have they ever been to HK?! Have they seen how busy the surface traffic already is? Building a tram line on the northern edge of Central and Wan Chai is not only impossible but also utterly useless. Ok, fine, they could attract tourists. But there is not enough people living/working on the harbour front to sustain a tram line. Not to mention MTR is also planning for a North Island Line right now so the proposed tram line will overlap with the future NIL of MTR. It is also completely cut off from everything else and almost impossible to connect the proposed tram line to the existing tram lines without turning the current road traffic into an absolute mess.
Lastly, if they raise the long-lived 2 HKD fare for tram, I will not only be a secret Connex hater, but also an official Veolia hater!