I settled in Macao at the time when the Sai Wan Bridge was being built. The view was truly spectacular: colossal piles of concrete were being planted in the murky water on both sides of the channel between Eastern Taipa and the peninsula, and this cyclopean endeavor of 2,200 meters reflected the promise of a giant step forward if not for mankind at least for the future development of Macao. Symbolically, its “M” shape reminded us proudly of the initial letter of the SAR name in most Latin scripts, and let’s be honest, although the pressing need for a new passage to the islands seemed questionable when it opened in 2004, everybody felt it was indeed an elegant piece of suspended motorway. Moreover, for the first time ever, all districts of Macao would remain accessible thanks to its emergency lower deck tunnel even when hit by the worst typhoons. Beautiful, visionary, practical…
But integrity, unfortunately, does not only apply to territory. Later on, in the wake of the Ao Man Long scandal, the most valuable piece of infrastructure since the handover became known as the “corruption bridge”: in order to win the tender, the general manager of Chon Tit (Macau) Investment and Development, the contractor, had paid a kickback of 14 million Patacas to the former Secretary for Transport and Public Works. Since then, and especially because of the future construction of the light rapid-transit (LRT), several flaws in design have surfaced, most importantly regarding ventilation systems and emergency evacuation routes in the lower deck tunnel and of course the capacity (or more precisely the lack thereof) of the bridge's 96 supporting cables to meet loading requirements for the additional weight of the LRT. If we discard rust, potholes and cracks, only the surface of the bridge remained unscathed, but that was counting without the DSAT’s most recent resolve.
As it is often the case, everything started with a noble intention. Rightly concerned by a spate of serious road casualties involving motorcycles on the Sai Wan Bridge, the DSAT decided a few months ago to go ahead with a plan to create a dedicated lane for motorcycles on the bridge. Fair enough. Previous talks regarding exclusive two-wheelers lanes on that bridge had already occurred in 2007 when the use of the lower deck tunnel was justly considered, just to be dismissed because of lack of ventilation systems (remind you of something?). What came as a shock this time around is that the motorcycles-only lane would be placed on the right side of the road, thus contradicting a general rule that motorcycles should keep on their left and imposing an intricate scheme contrary to the most basic common sense — at least in four locations, the main gangway for cars is reduced to a single lane!
This new scheme does belong to the generic category of absurd decision making as it persistently and fundamentally acts against its professed objective: security is far from being guaranteed, as the accident that occurred on August 27 just reminded us, just eight days after the supposedly provisional plan went into effect. It is doubly absurd as the new scheme has now created problems of its own pertaining to practicality and fluidity of traffic—I can predict monster traffic jams after school resumes on Monday September 3rd. DSAT, please check and act—amend or scrap! As we all very well know the road to hell is paved with good intentions!
Published in Macau Daily Times on August 31st 2012
Friday, August 31, 2012
Thursday, August 23, 2012
KAPOK: On the Road Again
Traffic congestion is on the rise in Macao, a situation that every resident experiences on a daily basis, whether he or she is a driver or a simple pedestrian having to hop on a bus or just cross the street while humming a carbon dioxide enriched SAR air. Many culprits are of course to be blamed, but recent figures released by the DSEC on the number of new vehicles being put on the road every month has found a disturbing and overemphasized echo in the news, as if the end user — the car driver — was the chief culprit and therefore had to be disciplined by imposing more stringent taxes on the licensing of new vehicles.
Looking at the official figures, one first realizes that there are a lot of vehicles on the roads of Macao and that new registrations are on the rise, by 5% officially year-on-year for a total 210,580 vehicles (112,644 motorcycles, 91,326 light automobiles and 6,610 heavy automobiles) at the end of June 2012 — a journalist from the Portuguese press made the calculation that “some 21 new vehicles invade the streets of our little territory every day”. But then, how do we compare? If one looks at Hong Kong, there were 425,000 licensed private cars in June 2011, whereas the equivalent figure for Macao was 78,000: a ratio of about 1/5.5 whereas the population ratio between the two SARs is about 1/13.3. Not too bad for Macao.
A more common ratio however does not refer to the total population or even the number of drivers but to the number of kilometers of public roads. In Hong Kong, this figure is widely available — 293 vehicles (not counting motorcycles) per public road kilometer — whereas for Macao I had to reconstruct the ratio by looking at Chapter 13 of the Yearbook, where one can find two figures for the total number of kilometers of road: either 311 kilometers of roads and highways (this figure being also the one advertised in the cover page of the chapter) or 413 kilometers of roads and highways “for vehicles”. We therefore end up with respectively 315 or 237 vehicles per kilometer of public roads. In either case, that ratio is not that bad — hence my wonder as to why we have two figures and what they mean exactly, either in English or in Chinese — as we fare well in the range of Hong Kong or even Singapore and Tokyo, and far better than Taipei, for example, that stands at more than 1,000 vehicles per kilometer of roads.
Is the total number of vehicles really the main culprit then? Will increasing the taxes just like in Singapore where taxes on new car licensing amount to more than the price of the car really the solution? Is imposing quotas and selling new plates at public auctions as it has been the case in Shanghai since the 1990s the way to go (average price for a new plate standing at more than RMB50,000)? Luckily enough in Macao there is no contradiction between our aspiration to live a better and cleaner life and the necessity to boost our automobile industry, so it is high time to say that the real solution lies in having a far-reaching and meaningful urban development master plan coupled to an integrated public transportation service that makes private vehicles “unwelcome” in our streets, even though they comply by Euro VI standards (and not only Euro IV as it has just been decided). There is no more time for compromise!
Published in Macau Daily Times, August 3rd 2012
Looking at the official figures, one first realizes that there are a lot of vehicles on the roads of Macao and that new registrations are on the rise, by 5% officially year-on-year for a total 210,580 vehicles (112,644 motorcycles, 91,326 light automobiles and 6,610 heavy automobiles) at the end of June 2012 — a journalist from the Portuguese press made the calculation that “some 21 new vehicles invade the streets of our little territory every day”. But then, how do we compare? If one looks at Hong Kong, there were 425,000 licensed private cars in June 2011, whereas the equivalent figure for Macao was 78,000: a ratio of about 1/5.5 whereas the population ratio between the two SARs is about 1/13.3. Not too bad for Macao.
A more common ratio however does not refer to the total population or even the number of drivers but to the number of kilometers of public roads. In Hong Kong, this figure is widely available — 293 vehicles (not counting motorcycles) per public road kilometer — whereas for Macao I had to reconstruct the ratio by looking at Chapter 13 of the Yearbook, where one can find two figures for the total number of kilometers of road: either 311 kilometers of roads and highways (this figure being also the one advertised in the cover page of the chapter) or 413 kilometers of roads and highways “for vehicles”. We therefore end up with respectively 315 or 237 vehicles per kilometer of public roads. In either case, that ratio is not that bad — hence my wonder as to why we have two figures and what they mean exactly, either in English or in Chinese — as we fare well in the range of Hong Kong or even Singapore and Tokyo, and far better than Taipei, for example, that stands at more than 1,000 vehicles per kilometer of roads.
Is the total number of vehicles really the main culprit then? Will increasing the taxes just like in Singapore where taxes on new car licensing amount to more than the price of the car really the solution? Is imposing quotas and selling new plates at public auctions as it has been the case in Shanghai since the 1990s the way to go (average price for a new plate standing at more than RMB50,000)? Luckily enough in Macao there is no contradiction between our aspiration to live a better and cleaner life and the necessity to boost our automobile industry, so it is high time to say that the real solution lies in having a far-reaching and meaningful urban development master plan coupled to an integrated public transportation service that makes private vehicles “unwelcome” in our streets, even though they comply by Euro VI standards (and not only Euro IV as it has just been decided). There is no more time for compromise!
Published in Macau Daily Times, August 3rd 2012
KAPOK: Carelessness, Ignorance or Intentional Absurdity?
Every now and then it sounds like an imperative to reflect with a bit of distance on the situation in Macao. Going away for my annual leave to Europe always gives me that opportunity to further the gap, getting to read with fresh eyes news and analysis coming from afar and being suddenly immersed in the joys and mores of a world that remains both familiar and yet imprecise because of presumed turmoil derived from what appears to be everlasting economic concerns.
A very common, not to say overwhelming perception in Asia is that Europe is going through a time of great upheavals and that Europeans are in much despair, Greece serving as the utmost repulsive example of failure as far as governance is concerned. If you add the fact that Greece is the birthplace of demos kratia, the power of the people, you very soon stumble upon very sloppy and yet highly pervasive lines of argument establishing some kind of causality between the least worse form of government and the inability to grow or nurture oneself economically.
The people who make that connection are usually the same who profess that democracy is anyway a product of importation that has little compatibility with the cultural values of Asia—never mind that Asia itself is not one, and that the political regimes of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan can without a doubt be characterized as democracy. Of course, capitalism, that is to say the accumulation of wealth held by private hands vying for profits, also originated in Europe, but for that accommodation and acculturation appear to be almost natural. Culture is selective, especially in the mind of those who wish to keep a monopoly on decision taking.
And yet, everybody seems to agree that one of the key sources of legitimacy for a government derives from its ability to take into account the wishes of the citizenry, the so-called public opinion, at least to a certain extent. Despite its incapacity in pushing the envelop of democratic reform to its rightful level, the government of the Macao SAR has not shun from that necessity, allowing for a proliferation of public consultations and a drastically increased receptivity to the public’ grievances. So much so in fact that legislator and member of the Executive Council Chan Meng Kam recently lamented that the government had gone too far in this respect, showing indecision, loosing its credibility and sapping its authority along the way. Taking recent examples of thwarted public regulations and policies such as the bus fare hike, the 3G upgrade or the Taipa Traffic Centre relocation, Mr Chan insisted that lack of proper planning systemically caused a huge embarrassment for the government, having but only one choice: to stop or diametrically change pronouncements when met with serious opposition from the public.
Reading recently a book authored by Christian Morel on absurd decisions and why we persist in committing fundamental and persistent errors, I was reminded that training manuals for pilots distinguish between four types of error: carelessness, transgression (breaking a rule), ignorance and representation—the latter being probably the most lethal as it has little chances to be spotted. Representation or perception is at the heart of human psychology: we all use heuristic methods, in which shortcuts based on our experience allow for greater velocity in taking a decision but also more abundant approximations. What is even more troubling is that this cognitive makeshift ends up on a decision that is seldom the responsibility of a single individual but of a group.
What is it going to be for this recent spate of senseless decisions taken in our SAR: carelessness, transgression, ignorance or representation? A mix of the four? And what is the remedy? Actual accountability, political one, would not have been a luxury.
Published in the Macau Daily Times, July 20th 2012
A very common, not to say overwhelming perception in Asia is that Europe is going through a time of great upheavals and that Europeans are in much despair, Greece serving as the utmost repulsive example of failure as far as governance is concerned. If you add the fact that Greece is the birthplace of demos kratia, the power of the people, you very soon stumble upon very sloppy and yet highly pervasive lines of argument establishing some kind of causality between the least worse form of government and the inability to grow or nurture oneself economically.
The people who make that connection are usually the same who profess that democracy is anyway a product of importation that has little compatibility with the cultural values of Asia—never mind that Asia itself is not one, and that the political regimes of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan can without a doubt be characterized as democracy. Of course, capitalism, that is to say the accumulation of wealth held by private hands vying for profits, also originated in Europe, but for that accommodation and acculturation appear to be almost natural. Culture is selective, especially in the mind of those who wish to keep a monopoly on decision taking.
And yet, everybody seems to agree that one of the key sources of legitimacy for a government derives from its ability to take into account the wishes of the citizenry, the so-called public opinion, at least to a certain extent. Despite its incapacity in pushing the envelop of democratic reform to its rightful level, the government of the Macao SAR has not shun from that necessity, allowing for a proliferation of public consultations and a drastically increased receptivity to the public’ grievances. So much so in fact that legislator and member of the Executive Council Chan Meng Kam recently lamented that the government had gone too far in this respect, showing indecision, loosing its credibility and sapping its authority along the way. Taking recent examples of thwarted public regulations and policies such as the bus fare hike, the 3G upgrade or the Taipa Traffic Centre relocation, Mr Chan insisted that lack of proper planning systemically caused a huge embarrassment for the government, having but only one choice: to stop or diametrically change pronouncements when met with serious opposition from the public.
Reading recently a book authored by Christian Morel on absurd decisions and why we persist in committing fundamental and persistent errors, I was reminded that training manuals for pilots distinguish between four types of error: carelessness, transgression (breaking a rule), ignorance and representation—the latter being probably the most lethal as it has little chances to be spotted. Representation or perception is at the heart of human psychology: we all use heuristic methods, in which shortcuts based on our experience allow for greater velocity in taking a decision but also more abundant approximations. What is even more troubling is that this cognitive makeshift ends up on a decision that is seldom the responsibility of a single individual but of a group.
What is it going to be for this recent spate of senseless decisions taken in our SAR: carelessness, transgression, ignorance or representation? A mix of the four? And what is the remedy? Actual accountability, political one, would not have been a luxury.
Published in the Macau Daily Times, July 20th 2012
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)