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Following is a question by the Hon Lau Kong-wah and a written reply by the Secretary for Security, Mr Ambrose S K Lee, in the Legislative Council today (November 23):
Question:
Phase II of the Lok Ma Chau Control Point expansion project was completed at the end of 2003, with new facilities including a coach parking information system ("the information system") and travellators. However, I have received complaints about the information system being not fully utilized because of repeated failures, and because most coach drivers do not bother to enter the vehicle registration marks after parking their coaches. Moreover, there are also complaints that the travellators at the Control Point are often out of service. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council of:
(a) the anticipated and actual utilization of the information system and travellators mentioned above;
(b) the respective numbers of days since commissioning on which both of the two facilities were in normal operation, one or both of them were out of service; and
(c) the reasons for the two facilities being out of service, and the numbers of days on which such suspension of service was attributable to the contractor's quality of work, human errors or mechanical failures respectively?
Reply:
Madam President,
(a) The second phase of the Lok Ma Chau boundary crossing expansion project aims to cater for the cross boundary needs of an anticipated daily average of 35,000 passengers, mainly through the renovation and extension of relevant facilities.
The purpose of the coach parking information system ("the information system") is to make it easier for passengers who have completed the immigration procedures to locate the parking bays of their buses. The use of the system by bus drivers is on a voluntary basis. No record of the utilization rate of the system has been maintained.
Two simple surveys were conducted on the utilization of the ten travellators in March to April and October 2005 respectively, the result of which showed that a daily average of about 190 and 19,800 passengers had used the travellators at the drop-off and pick-up areas respectively.
(b) and (c) The information system was out of service because of mechanical failure for 74 days. As regards the 10 travellators, their operation has never been suspended across the board.
For individual travellators, owing to some minor failures (damaged glass modules or damaged belts), the service of three of them had been suspended three times for five, 22 and 27 days respectively. For another three travellators, their pallets had been damaged by jammed small metallic objects, and had become unable to meet the safety requirements under the Code of Practice on the Design and Construction of Lifts and Escalators published by the Electrical and Mechanical Services Department. As a result, they have been closed since July 23, 2004, August 17, 2004 and March 7, 2005 respectively (See Note). The relevant Government departments, consultant and contractor are actively exploring various remedial measures.
Note: It should be noted that energy-saving feature has been adopted in the design of the travellators. A travellator only starts to run when its sensor has detected passengers riding on it. It will stop automatically when there is no passenger using it. In addition, to ensure passenger safety, the Police would temporarily suspend the operation of certain travellators when their two ends are crowded with queuing people.
Ends/Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Issued at HKT 14:36
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