Macau’s long-delayed Light Rail Transit (LRT) system will only be fully ready in 2022, Transportation Infrastructure Office (GIT) Deputy Director Andre Ritchie told the Portuguese news agency Lusa in an interview published Wednesday.
Ritchie told the Lisbon-based wire service that the nine-kilometre-long LRT segment in Taipa was slated to be completed by the end of 2016. The Taipa section will connect the airport with Sai Van Bridge and Barra (Inner Harbour entrance) at the southern tip of the peninsula.
Ritchie said that the Barra LRT station construction would begin next year. He said the station would include a terminal for public buses and tourist coaches, a carpark and a taxi rank.
The report also quoted Ritchie as saying that the LRT project design for the peninsula would only be completed next year and take five to six years to complete He said that, consequently, the city’s whole 20-kilomtre-long LRT network would only be ready in 2022.
The official also said that at current prices the whole project would cost at least 15 billion patacas. He also said that the LRT construction in Taipa was “complex” since it involved up to 100-metre-deep piles.
The government proposed the LRT project in 2004. Originally, the system was slated to be operational two years ago.
The project is fully funded by the government.
Meanwhile, the Statistic and Census Bureau (DSEC) said yesterday that the city’s number of licensed motor vehicles reached 232,586 at the end of June, a five percent increase from a year earlier.
Motorcycles – mostly scooters – accounted for 52 percent of the total number of motor vehicles.
New registration of motor vehicles rose nine percent year-on-year to 9,819 in the first half of the year.
In the first six months, the police recorded 7,517 traffic accidents, up five percent year-on-year, resulting in 2,540 casualties, seven of them fatal.(macaunews/macaupost)
