Urban Transport in the OIC Megacities
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services were also protected against other lower priority public transport modes. For example, at
most only half of non-franchised (residential) bus routes could run parallel to existing franchised bus
routes. This policy assured that the traffic demand for the mass transit railways would not be diluted
by other modes of transport, and hence the huge investment on such projects would be paid back
within a reasonable return period. During the 1990s, the government of Hong Kong also relaxed the
regulations on bus services with an aim to improve the quality of public transport services through
competition. In 1991, Hong Kong started open tendering for new franchised bus routes (Tang and Lo,
2008).
However, by the 2000s Hong Kong’s planning authorities were under the political pressure for the
freedom of choice between modes and faced strong opposition to plans of consolidating bus services
in coordination with the commissioning of new railway lines. New towns were first serviced by bus
services until they grew enough to justify the introduction of a rail service. However, these towns were
sufficiently accommodated by bus services before the respective rail links were built. Upon
completion of the railways, the development of the new towns had become basically flattened and the
traffic demand (both existing and derived) was not sufficient to fill up the increased supply of
transport services from the new railways in addition to the existing bus services. Besides, the
residents had been accustomed to the door-to-door bus services and transport providers were not
given incentives to give up profitable routes (Tang and Lo, 2008).
The public transport market as a result of the indiscriminate expansion of both rail and bus services
lost its equilibrium as per the well-coordinated transport system established in the 1980s. The
oversupply of public transport services as a whole can be reflected by the lower than anticipated
patronage level of the new railway lines recently commissioned to serve the new towns. In addition,
service competition and overwhelming increase in bus services has resulted in the negative
externalities of not only road congestion, but also the increased demand for more roadway capacity
expansion. The lesson to be learned in this case is that such a problem cannot be resolved purely
through market processes, but there is a need for administrative measures to make the public
transport market more coordinated so as to alleviate the negative externalities caused by service
oversupply and wasteful competition (Tang and Lo, 2008).
Comparison with other cities: Tokyo
Tokyo is the world’s biggest megacity. Except for its size, what makes Tokyo different is that is has
been one of the world’s biggest metropolitan areas since the early 1700s. Railway construction was
one of the national modernization policies that started in the 1860s, and the national railway network
connecting central Tokyo and other cities in Japan was established by the end of the nineteenth
century. Beginning in the 1920s, private railway companies purchased huge areas of land in the
suburbs of Tokyo and developed housing estates or garden suburbs. Private railway companies were
able to pay for the railway constructions by the profits theymade fromselling or leasing the developed
housing estates and commercial areas around the stations. On the other hand in central Tokyo, the
subway network has been developed continuously since 1927. As a result, nearly 73% of morning
commuters to Tokyo used railway lines while only 9% of them used private automobiles in 1998. Not
only the railway system is well equipped, but also the season ticket discount for commuter was
introduced since before the war, employers usually pay commuting cost to employees, major
companies often inhibit employees to commute by a private car because of limitation of parking place
and reparations risk for car accidents caused by employees, and traffic congestion in commuting time
in Tokyo is so terrible that makes commuting to central Tokyo from suburb impossible in fact (Okata
and Murayama, 2011).
However, for the past two decades the population of Tokyo is growing very slowly and it expected to
remain almost stable in the coming decades. With the decrease of working population, it may become
more difficult to maintain today’s sophisticated railway system and a monocentric spatial structure.
In addition, suburbs without sufficient public transit services have already become automobile
oriented. On the other hand, population decline is observed in the outer suburbs and people are