Secretary for Transport and Public Works Raimundo do Rosario said in the legislature on Monday that the increase in the number of registered motor vehicles was expected to be less than one per cent this year.
Rosario made the remarks on the first of a two-day Q&A session about his portfolio’s policy guidelines for next year.
The 2017 policy address proposes that the annual growth rate of vehicles should not exceed 3.5 per cent.
According to the latest available official figures, the number of licensed motor vehicles at the end of October totalled 249,321, up by 1.0 per cent year-on-year.
Addressing Monday’s plenum, lawmaker-cum-unionist Lam Heong Sang said he thought that the 3.5 per cent target was too high.
Responding to Lam’s remarks, Rosario said that the growth rate of vehicles this year was expected to be less than one percent – 0.7 or 0.8 per cent, adding that it would be the first time for many years that the annual growth rate was less than one percent.
Rosario also said that more people were using public buses than previously. He said there were, on average, 590,000 passenger trips on public buses every day in September, adding that one day that month the number of passenger trips was 630,000.
Rosario said he was confident that traffic conditions would improve in five to 10 years time, vowing to continue to strive for improved bus and taxi services, as well as building more “pedestrian systems”.
(Macau News / The Macau Post Daily)
