Transport for China

Last week I got back from eight days in Hong Kong. I’ve been to the former UK outpost five or six times, mostly because my two closest friends moved there in the 1990s and never came back. I don’t think it was something I said, more the 15 percent flat tax, lack of VAT and a environment which is all about business and commerce. The first time I went to HK, I walked out of the airport railway station and got into a cab. The driver’s first question was to ask me where I was from. His second was “how’s business?”

But if you have any interest in transport in its widest sense, you should spend time in Hong Kong: it’s like a slice through every new idea for the last 100 years. Aside from the large number of ferries (and the elegant Star Ferry terminus) running backwards and forwards between the local islands, HK’s oldest piece of public transport are probably the Edwardian trams, which have been shuttling through Central since 1904.

The local buses developed into a unique genus, with huge six-wheel double deckers dominating the roads. Many roads in wider Hong Kong are very steep (HK Island is effectively a single mini-mountain, with Central clinging on along the - increasingly reclaimed - waterline) so the buses had to be super-tough and super-powerful. Sadly, the six-wheel, three-door Leyland Olympians were retired some years ago.

Hong Kong - despite being a tiny area - is also a perfect showcase for the motorway madness of the 1960s. A huge, six-lane highway sweeps into Central, coming down from the Peak on concrete flyovers. In order for pedestrians to avoid the super-highway, and to make their way up into the steep streets of Central, Hong Kong has a number of covered walkways and escalators. The combination of super-highways and pedestrian walkways was explored by the brave-new-worlders in the UK, but nothing left the drawing board.

Car ownership per head is very low, partly because the taxi system is so good - talking you most places for £5. It uses ancient Toyota Crown saloons, which remind you of the tininess of 1980s Japanese cars. But they all run on natural gas, making them incredibly clean running, unlike London’s belching Black cabs.

Hong Kong also, famously, decided it needed a super-modern airport. So it simply built one on an artificial island on the waterline of Lantau Island. And then they built a super-quick, super-modern, railway to shuttle travellers directly from the terminal into Central in 24 minutes. The huge suspension bridge and highway that allows you to swiftly drive from Central to Lantau - an island that's mostly a nature reserve - is also highly impressive.

This picture, which I took from one of the overhead walkways, shows the latest instalment in Hong Kong’s blisteringly no-nonsense approach to transport infrastructure. This tunnel is part of a new, mostly underground, £5.5bn underground system from Central HK to Shatin, which will take people 11 miles north, heading under the bay. When Edinburgh’s very modest tram system has cost nearly £1bn, it looks like value, too. Can you imagine any city in the UK being this bold and this organised?

All of which is highly impressive on a rocky, humid, outcrop that is desperately short of space and charges its citizens so little in tax. I fear that the UK - Crossrail aside - will never again have the money or political will to indulge in serious transport infrastructure. Will the UK ever see a new piece of motorway again? That’s why I find HK so liberating: it’s a city that all about making life and movement easier, rather than harder.