Local History Project- Trams and the urbanization in Hong Kong

Transcription

1 CAH3511_Research Paper _GROUP 3 Wong Ching Chan Shut Yan Leung Chung Yan Word Count: 3006 Local History Project- Trams and the urbanization in Hong Kong Introduction and methodology Dating back to more than a century ago, constructing the tramways was considered as a Mega infrastructure, as it was first of for Hong Kong having such Mass transport system. The establishment of tramways was yet not something new under the sun in the eyes of British. Having such a mass transport system also seems to be a symbol of urbanization. However, proceeding to urbanization was not as easy as expected. In the following, we will focus on the period from the late 19th century to 1919, dividing the essay mainly into two periods: firstly, the construction process of tramways before 1904, which fierce conflicts among different stakeholders complicated the construction, and secondly the early stage of its emergence, which citizens unawareness towards tram led to numbers of accidents. Through such division, we would like to highlight that, Hong Kong, in order to become an urbanized society, except having the advanced hardware, cultivating citizens the sense upon the change in society is also important. Our research mainly based on primary sources, official documents from colonial office named as War and Colonial Department and Colonial Office: Hong Kong, Original Correspondence (CO129) and newspapers from 1882 to Our focus would not include the research on Peak tramways. The construction process, 1882 to 1904 During the period of , discussions on permanent tramway construction had generated a lot of problems. First, it was the first time tram railways to be constructed on the reclaimed land and the authorities had to ensure the safety of tram operation. Second, tramway construction would affect built-ups on road and the pipes and electric lines of telephones underground which required a series of follow-up works. The official launch of the tramways along Sai Ying Pun to Sau Ki Wan was on 30 July,

2 1903. However, one year prior to the official launch, the permanent way of construction was fiercely debated to the extent that unless such argument was settled, the construction was not allowed to carry on. Such negotiation process mainly involved four parties: UK government which was represented by the inspector officer of the Board of trade and the Colonial Secretary Mr. Chamberlain from the Colonial office; Mr. Chatham speaks for the Director of Public works of Hong Kong government; the Resident Engineer Mr. Harkwood of the Hong Kong Electric Tramways Ltd.; Messr. Dickinson the consulting engineers of his company, the contractor of tramways, Messr. Leigh and Orange. Although tramways were already established also in UK and its colonies at that time, the Official in London, as the ultimate authority of decisionmaking, in great extent acted upon the advice by the HK government due to the reclaimed ground nature of the locality during the negotiation with the Tramway Company and the contractor. In the very initial stage of discussion, the director of Public works Mr. Chatham was conservative towards the construction, he insisted that a bed of 14 inches in depth, 12 inches between the rails and 18 inches extend outside each track was needed, the contractors yet saw such construction is extravagant and largely in excess of the requirements in its letter to the Colonial Office on April 1903, the company referred to opinions of experienced English engineers and the Singapore s tramways to justify its viewpoint 1. The Director then accepted a concession proposed by the company. The permanent way of construction, according to the cross section sketch, duly approved by both the Hong Kong government and the contractor, was finalized by 18 inches by 6 inches of concrete under the rails and the surface concrete was 6 inches in depth, 6 inches between the rails and each rail extends 18 inches outside the track 2. Such a layer of concrete should be constructed underneath each line of Tramway 3. However, the consulting engineer then modified the design by having 4 inches concrete between the rails, instead of 6 inches which had been approved 4. Mr. Chatham discovered that a portion of construction omitted a strip of surfacing 5. 1 (CO129/321): 1988 : (CO129/318): 1988 : Ibid., Ibid., I find that a deviation has been made from the approved cross-section of the Tramway in the construction of a portion of the double line in Queens Road East opposite the gat of the Naval yard and for some distance on either side of the same. The Deviation consists of the omission of a strip of concrete surfacing about 3 4 in the width and 6 in thickness, between the two lines of rails. From (CO129/318):

3 Chatham, who had already made a concession before, rejected such modification. Chatham s strong opposition towards the modification was seen in his letter from to Mr. Hackwood in 20 th July 1903, stating that, no modification by the company could be made. The company should follow the approved cross section that bounded by the section 13 of the Tramway ordinance. Otherwise, the director would not permit to open any road for construction 6. Governor Henry Blake, further clarified the decision of Mr. Chatham in his latter letter to the Colonial Secretary that the approved measure was for reclaimed ground 7. Therefore Mr. Chatham adhering to the approved cross section was apparently for the sake of safety for the public, in order to prevent the possibility of breaking of ground. Mr. Hackwood justified their consideration that such demand would involve a further expenditure of over 2000 pound, and a sum of 200,000 or more outlay would increase upon completing the tram. Such a contingency was not favoured by the directors of the company 8. The Colonial office as the final authority supported the decision by Mr. Chatham and the Secretary firmly stated that, Such cross section has been duly approved under the Ordinance. The Direction of Public Works in the matter of your Tramways has made the utmost concessions which he feels justified in making and I am to state that this government sees no sufficient reason for allowing your Company to depart in any particular from the form of construction which has been duly approved 9., from the letter to Resident Engineer, on 19 June Finally, the negotiation process was being unsolved until the directors of the company decided not to bother with the Director of Public work anymore and finally agreed not to oppose the demand of Mr. Chatham 10. The perseverance of Mr. Chatham, Director of Public works, on the thickness of concrete, which was stubbornness in the eyes of the contractors, triggered a more than half year debate on the permanent way of construction. It was clear that the Hong Kong Electric Tramways Ltd and its consulting engineer s attempt to reduce the use of concrete to minimize the production cost as much as possible revealed that they 1988 : p (CO129/318): 1988 : Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

4 valued mainly on the cost effectiveness. However, The Hong Kong and UK government valued on the safety of the tramway, in other words, the safety of the public. Although the officials seemed to be much more conservative than the engineers, their concerns were highly based on local condition, their evaluation upon uncertainty of constructing on reclaimed ground, such concerns though was discussed among the four parties, yet was not taken into account by the British engineers. The construction of Tramway although was brought forward from UK to Hong Kong, the local experience was also essential in order to formulate a more appropriate policy, only by the insistence of Mr. Chatham, the safety of the tramway was finally assured. Another conflict would be the debate on the compensation to China and Japan Telephone Company by the Tramway Company. Since the telephone company was originally using single wire system, with the earth as a return, it was seriously affected by the operation of the tramway. One proposed measure was to adopt the double trolley system by using an insulated return wire for their trams instead of using their rails and the earth as a return. Yet, this adoption would be costly and double trolley system was not commonly used. Another proposed solution was by metallic circuiting the Telephone System. While doubling the lines in Hong Kong meant it was also necessary to double the lines in Kowloon, the telephone company was concerned that part of the expense should be bear by the tramway company because it was not due to any fault of its own, the proposed compensation at that time was 1000 UK dollars. Meanwhile, the telephone company bargained that it had no prolonged term of License and no Concession but only an insecure tenure of life. They hoped to increase the compensation from 1000 to 1500 UK dollars and proposed an alternative was to assist its company to obtain a license or concession for 25 years 11. Eventually, the alternative was turned down by the authorities and the debate on compensation ended till the agreement on compensating one-third of the expense of compulsory outlay, that was 3000 UK dollars, was dealt as the accepted amount 12. In this issue, we could see that, again, financial concern would be one of the troublesome obstacles to hinder the progress of construction, so the pace of urbanization. In the process, it involved discussion and information transfer with different parties, only the communication between the colonial government of Hong Kong and the British government had lengthened the time for discussion due to distanced communication and time-consuming information transfer process. 11 (CO129/309): 1988 : (CO129/315): 1988 : 6-7

5 Sometimes the communication was complicated because of clarification of messages delivered in the letters, especially when it came to the approval of some decision made, the officer would like to place safe to get a clear formal statement or agreement from the department. We could see, to facilitate a development of a society to pave a path to urbanization, despite of a mega construction work in a broad sense, it also required a long process of administration and negotiation in a narrower sense. When it came across the issue of tramway fares, the government also concerned about the affordability of the citizens. When Sir Henry Blake demanded to take one dollar per mile as the basis for the fares of third class passengers, it had to reduce the fare with reference to the current English basis. Overall, the fare in Hong Kong were almost half of that in English. However, compared the situation with English tramways, the cost of installing a line in the Colony of Hong Kong is at least 25% greater than installing a similar in British, and the traffic in Hong Kong was more problematic, as described in the official letter, than in British, With the above concerns, the government and the Legislative Council had to alter the section of Tramway act and Ordinance so that the life of concession of tramway was set to be 50 years 13. After a glance of the difficulties encountered by the British and colonial Hong Kong government before the actual emergence of tram transportation, during the actual operation, piles of problems in relation to the users of tramways also challenged the authorities to step further on the path of urbanization. Roads in early 20th century Hong Kong: The designs of traffic light, sign and road crossing are not difficult to understand nowadays because we have completed the whole cultivation of road safety and related concepts. But what we understand as road is in nature different from the past. At that time, roads were shared freely by all people. There were coolies with heavy loads standing in the middle, rickshaws lining up the roadside to wait for passengers, and of course pedestrians walking along the road. And before 1930 British government had no large-scale development plan for road works since reclamation project was the first priority in order to deal with the concentration of population and severe shortage of land. Therefore, the majority of geographers who studied the urbanization considered the road development of Hong Kong was actually very fragmentary in the pre-war period (CO129/315): 1988 : Pui Yin Ho, In Ways to Urbanisation: Post-War Road Development in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press,2008), 31.

6 Tram accidents Dating back to 1904, tram was new to either the government or people in Hong Kong. Although British government proposed the implementation project of tramway, it was not until 1901 that electric tramways were opening in UK. 15 In between 1901 and 1904, only 3 year apart the electric tram was introduced to Hong Kong, while in fact British government and company themselves were still learning to handle this kind of new invention in a whole new place. For people in Hong Kong, tram was new anyway as palanquin and rickshaw remained their most popular land transport. It is found that very few people would have relied on the motor vehicles to travel as there were only six licensed private cars in Throwing the familiar is always tough. The impression towards tram was not as positive as the tramways company imagined in the very beginning. From 1904 to 1919, local newspapers had been extensively reporting the trams accidents. Most of these accidents had mentioned the injuries of passengers, or even deaths in serious situations. It is in no doubt that the public concern for traffic safety was the main barrier to popularize the usage of tram in the society of Hong Kong. However, if we examined the reasons behind of those causes, human negligence would need to share large parts of the responsibilities and it was attributed to three main factors: situations of co-occupying the tram tracks, undeveloped traffic awareness, inappropriate behaviors. As long as the Des Voeux Road, Queen s Road, and Connaught Road were the main thoroughfares of the city s nucleus, the construction of tramways had interrupted the regular and familiar patterns of the common road users. 1. Rickshaws and coolies One specificity of rickshaw is that it enjoys fluid mobility to pick up the passengers to their destinations. When trams began operating, it started to narrow down the possible range for rickshaws to carry passengers on road because large areas of road were revered for trams to travel. But on occasion, rickshaw drivers would still use the tram tracks for convenience. It happened that the rickshaws and trams would have collided on the tram tracks which possibly caused both injuries and deaths. 17 It is also noticed that some coolies would occupy the tram tracks. They would have placed a wooden trolley on the track and used it as the route for loading and unloading goods 15 Ricky Liu, & Joseph Tse, Amazing Ding Ding (Hong Kong: Cosmos Books Ltd, 2012), Wing Lun Mak, Hong Kong Tramway, the Spine, Reinterpret the Channel of Mobility, (Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1997). 17 木車撞電車, The Chinese Mail 香港華字日報, December 10,1907.

7 at the piers. While the tram was moving towards the coolies, they were often too late to leave the track and were hit by tram. 18 Co-occupancies should never be ignored, but when they are, serious tram accidents were often the result. These type of tram accidents had later led the legislation to prohibit other vehicles from using the tram track and offender would be sentenced to a fine of 20 HK Dollar or one month s imprisonment Pedestrians and Passengers The Chinese Mail recorded the first tram accident happened after the official launch on 30th July One pedestrian was killed by the tram. The tram driver described in the court that he had rang the bell warning the pedestrian that the tram was coming. However, the pedestrian did not recognize the ringing bell and it ended up in tragedy. Similar tragedy was frequently reported by other press. As mentioned above, people were used to share the road with rickshaws and coolie, therefore, they were not minded to pay attention of the traffic condition. In addition, there was no public transport that could convert electricity into motion before Tram as a novel technology indeed challenged people s ideas of taking public transport. It is reported that quite a lot of passengers were too rush to get off while the tram did not stop properly at the station. 21 These reactions from pedestrian and passenger were the evidences of Hong Kong people s collective ignorance about the modernization of city life. 3. People who committed fare evasion According to historical documents, the tram fares were 10 cents and 5 cents respectively for first class-class and third-class. 22 The average monthly wage of common people was only around 2 HK Dollar. 23 Thus, the tram fares for third-class was considered very expensive. It is quite difficult to regard tram as a preferred transport as the fares were unaffordable for most of the people, though the third-class fare was later reduced to 3 cents. 24 To avoid paying the fares, some people would take to the risk to jump onto tram during half of the distance and jump out all of a sudden. But so often they could not control the pace and balance that this kind of inappropriate behavior would lead serious injuries as one common tram accident. 18 電車傷人又聞, The Chinese Mail 香港華字日報, October 5, Eric Lee, The Centenary Date with Hong Kong Tramways (Hong Kong: Tramric Product & Design Limited,2012), 電車碾斃, The Chinese Mail 香港華字日報, September 1, 試乘電車, The Chinese Mail 香港華字日報, June 7, Po Hung Cheng, Early Hong Kong Tramways (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005), Ibid., Ibid.,31.

8 Tram had affected the familiar patterns of road users in different aspect. In reviewing the tram accidents in the past, we understand that most of the accidents happened due to the human negligence, which came from the uncultivated sense of a traffic system at that time which we have now taken them for granted. Therefore, there were many tram accidents in the early Hong Kong. However, the challenges to tram, on the other hand, were the challenges to Hong Kong people of entering the era of modernization. The misunderstandings, ignorance, shortcoming caused in response to the new and unfamiliar environment were needed times for improvements. Conclusion No matter the two periods, in the construction process of tramways before 1904, or the early stage of its emergence, challenges were continuously brought to the government and the public. Despite of the technical problems encountered in the construction and operation of trams, the differences in values, knowledges and experiences between parties also generated misunderstandings and conflicts that hindered the progress of development. When facing the public, education is the forevermore long journey to bring a harmonized and modernized city. Hong Kong citizens, in this case, facing the newly established tramways, they had to accept the concept of mass transportation tool, in which the idea of mass, more explicitly, collective would be the most difficult concept they had to learn before proceeding to a more civilized citizen, as what this concept hidden behind were the issues of public awareness and disciplines. Under the colonial administration, the development of Hong Kong changed rapidly. On one hand, Hong Kong could borrow the experiences from the more developed England to foster their progress, yet on the other hand, in this case, the development of tramways, we could see, sometimes the foreign knowledges and situation might not be suitable for the local. There would be struggles on whether we take the ideas from the others or trust in ourselves to build up our society to a better one.

9 Bibliography Cheng, Po Hung. Early Hong Kong Tramways. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, Ho, Pui Yin. In Ways to Urbanisation: Post-War Road Development in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, Lee, Eric. The Centenary Date with Hong Kong Tramways. Hong Kong: Tramric Product & Design Limited, Liu, Ricky., & Tse, Joseph. Amazing Ding Ding. Hong Kong: Cosmos Books Ltd., Mak, Wing Lun. Hong Kong Tramway, the Spine, Reinterpret the Channel of Mobility. Hong Kong: Chinese Unversity of Hong Kong, United Kingdom, Public Record Office of UK. War and Colonial Department and Colonial Office: Hong Kong, Original Correspondence (129/309, pp ), United Kingdom, Public Record Office of UK. War and Colonial Department and Colonial Office: Hong Kong, Original Correspondence (129/315, pp. 6-7, ), United Kingdom, Public Record Office of UK. War and Colonial Department and Colonial Office: Hong Kong, Original Correspondence (129/318, pp , , , United Kingdom, Public Record Office of UK. War and Colonial Department and Colonial Office: Hong Kong, Original Correspondence (129/321, pp , ), 電車碾斃. The Chinese Mail 香港華字日報. September 1, 試乘電車. The Chinese Mail 香港華字日報. June 7, 木車撞電車. The Chinese Mail 香港華字日報. December 10, 1907.

10 電車傷人又聞. The Chinese Mail 香港華字日報. October 5, 1915.