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Opinion | To chart a new economic course for Hong Kong, build a new north-south rail line
- If the city is to transform into an innovation hub, high value-added manufacturing and new industries will need better transport connectivity
- A new rail line that runs the length of the eastern New Territories and links to Hong Kong Island would be a bold statement of intent
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Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu intends to proceed with the plan to build an innovation and technology hub in northern Hong Kong.
First proposed by former leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, the Northern Metropolis scheme aims to create thousands of jobs and homes, shift the economic centre of gravity to the New Territories, and deepen Hong Kong’s integration into the Greater Bay Area.
The Northern Metropolis will require new rail links to connect future new towns near the border to the urbanised parts of the New Territories. This will involve joining up a new Northern Link with the existing East Rail and West Rail lines to ease travel to the eastern and western sides of the city.
However, the current plans have two major weaknesses. First, the East Rail and West Rail lines are already saturated, and it will be hard to meet future needs by simply extending them.
Second, the plans fail to maximise the potential of the Eastern Knowledge and Technology Corridor from the government’s Hong Kong 2030+ blueprint for the city’s development.
This risks holding back the creation, in the east side of the New Territories and Kowloon, of a cluster comprising universities and hi-tech and knowledge-based industries such as data centres and science parks.
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