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Pricing out of the Gridlock

Traffic congestion in Hong Kong is going to get worse before it gets better, a British transport experts says, unless we can face up to the fact that we really do have a problem.

"Unfortunately, the worse the congestion gets, the more studies we tend to do and the less action we take to do anything about it," says Jack Opiola, International Director of Intelligent Transport Systems for Hyder Consulting, and a former consultant to the government on the feasibility of electronic road pricing.

And the problems that he is talking about are not just being stuck in traffic jams for hours. The cost of pollution-related respiratory disease to our healthcare system, not to mention the economy, will continue to mount, as the Air Pollution Index recording of 201 on September 14 warns.

Hong Kong's solution to traffic congestion has always been simple: build more roads. But after years of city planning without a transportation policy to guide planners, we have built ourselves an endless maze of bottlenecks.

The solution? An electronic road usage toll. Electronic road tolls are operating in several cities around the world, with the most talked about being central London's traffic congestion toll, implemented in February 2003, says Mr Opiola. Its planners faced huge opposition right up to the day the toll went into effect. Newspaper headlines were making dire predictions that the scheme would bring chaos to the city. But as central London's congestion charge celebrated its first birthday on February 17 this year, London's Mayor at the time, Ken Livingstone, extolled the virtues of his £5 charge, calling it "a radical solution to a long-standing problem."

"Around 75 percent of Londoners now support the scheme which has resulted in a 30 percent decrease in car traffic in the city," Mr Opiola says. "Bus ridership is up by 14 percent, and overall speeds on bus routes have increased by 20 percent."

Big retailers in the heart of the city have complained that the charge has cut into their turnover, while on the other hand corner-shop retailers are enjoying an upturn in business as more people are on the pavements instead of in their cars, he says.

Other cities around the world are studying if a similar system might ease their traffic woes, Hong Kong included. He believes that introducing a toll for entering congested areas of Hong Kong, say HK$80, would help ease traffic jams, but the system would only work if "free" alternative routes were available. Opposition to such a scheme would be inevitable, but a free alternative would undermine critics' arguments that they shouldn't be charged.

Electronic discs, similar to those used in current auto-toll booths in Hong Kong, could pick up signals from vehicles entering restricted zones and charge them, the revenue from which would go into the government's coffers.

Technology is readily available to make this a reality; the biggest hurdle is political will. London's Mr Livingstone faced severe criticism when he fought to bring the scheme into being, but the situation had become so unbearable that people, however reluctantly, realised that something had to be done before the situation reached crisis proportions. Is Hong Kong coming to a similar conclusion?

Speech    Q & A 

Unclogging Our Inboxes

Spammers are no longer just annoying, they are becoming sophisticated criminals, says Carl Hutzler, Director of AOL's Anti-Spam Operations. The problem has become so bad, in fact, that in the United States, the FBI and CIA are now investigating hundreds of cases ranging from stock-price manipulation to identity theft.

The alarming rise in fraud and identity theft through email spoofs has also forced attorney generals and the U.S. federal government to become involved in the problem. "Many spammers are now sophisticated groups of criminals with operations around the world. Legislation gives ISPs and government the tool to track down people who do spend spam," he said, referring to the U.S. Can-Spam Act of 2003, which allows Americans to opt out of receiving unsolicited computer messages.

The law, signed by President George W Bush last December, hasn't made much of a dent in the 2 billion spam messages that AOL filters out daily. Some critics of the law argue that it is actually making the situation worse because it gives anyone the right to spam as long as they provide a way for the receiver to "opt-out."

In Europe, email users have to "opt-in" mailing lists before a marketer can send them unsolicited emails, but critics of that law say it lacks the teeth to be of any real deterrent. Mr Hutzler says both systems have their pros and cons, and that Hong Kong will need to analyse which system best suits our needs as consultations on a proposed anti-spam law come to an end on October 25.

To make any real progress in the battle against spam, however, Mr Hutzler believes governments will need to take a three-pronged approach, starting with intelligent filter technologies. Feedback from AOL members allows the company to know what type of unsolicited email comes in, which helps fine tune the filter: "All members are watchdogs or policemen to catch spammers," he said. "Without our spam filtering, our system would fall over."

More consumer education is also needed as the percentage of people still opening unsolicited attachments, or having money stolen from bank accounts through so-called "phishing" scams -- where criminals try to capture unsuspecting users' personal and banking details -- is still quite high, he says.

Despite filtering, education and legislation efforts, Mr Hutzler concedes that the problem of spam continues to grow and may require alternative deterrents, such as charging marketers to email people, or domain key technologies.

In a bid to help sort out legitimate email from the junk, a technology called the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) has been developed. This is essentially an authentication scheme that tries to ensure that e-mail messages come from the place that they say they do. Microsoft, along with Amazon and Symantec's anti-spam firm Brightmail, is also working on a similar system dubbed Caller-ID.

"These technologies have been available for the past five years, but no one was really willing to implement them," he says. "Perhaps spam will be the trigger that finally forces these technologies forward."

Speech    Q & A

　


A Heritage of Red Tape?

Heritage tourism is more than simply old buildings. It represents the valued objects and qualities that have helped forge people and places into what they are today. It is the mirror of ourselves that we want the world to see, for tourists to come here and enjoy, and to tell their friends and families about when they return home. So it is hardly surprising that debate on the subject always runs passionately.

Members attending the Chamber's roundtable luncheon to hear Duncan Pescod, Deputy Commissioner for Tourism, talk about the development of heritage tourism in Hong Kong bubbled over with suggestions on what the government should be doing to make this long-discussed issue finally come to life. Unsurprisingly, Singapore was an often-touted example of what can be accomplished if done right. Everyone also seems to have a different opinion on how things should be done. And -- as is becoming usual -- everyone feels the government should be doing more.

"Why should government do it? Why shouldn't the private sector do it?" Mr Pescod asked, throwing back a question on why government doesn't develop tours of the Happy Valley Cemetery, or other heritage niches. "It just seems to me that people always say the government should do everything."

In Edinburgh and Paris, popular cemetery tours are run by the private sector, as are many other unique heritage tourism products. "If businesses genuinely feel there is potential to market these products," he said, "Then why don't they just go ahead and develop them themselves?"

The public's desire to play a role in preserving and enhancing Hong Kong, as shown regularly from debates on protecting and beautifying the harbour, to preserving the former Marine Police Headquarters in Tsimshatsui, is inspirational. Ideas, commitment and -- in the case of the Central Police Station compound -- money are all willingly contributed.

But the reason why much of this goodwill ends up at a dead-end, is due to the lack of a coordinating body to steer heritage preservation and tourism, a member of the audience suggested.

"The only thing lacking is that there is no one coordinating body to make things happen," he said. "Even the Antiquities and Monuments Office is subject to the same -- dare I say it -- bizarre red tape that businesses have to find a way through. A lot of little projects would be taken care of by the private sector if there was a guiding body to help out, because then a lot of people, families and companies would be more willing to take on a lot of these projects."

Speech    Q & A    Slides    Webcasting

Full list of Chamber programmes in September >>