Crossing Salisbury

It was once fairly simple—you walked down Nathan Road in Tsim Sha Tsui, crossed Salisbury Road outside The Peninsula, and already you were at the waterfront. As Tsim Sha Tsui is a major tourist spot, you would think the southernmost part of it would be easily accessible, allowing tourists to experience our very unique streetscape in the most convenient way possible. But no, crossing Salisbury Road is no walk in the park—the street-level crossing was eradicated during the past decade, which means that getting to the Space Museum from The Peninsula now is like walking through a maze. There are tunnels, detours, confusing road signs—in short it is a time-consuming pain in the ass. Though the Space Museum is just across from The Peninsula, which means it should be mere minutes away on foot, you must walk extra, taking double the time to get across the road using the pedestrian subway system.

Mary Melville has been a Tsim Sha Tsui resident for 20 years. She used to walk down to the waterfront quite often but has avoided doing so in the past few years. “It’s so troublesome to walk down there, going through numerous tunnels,” she says. “Now I take a bus from other parts of Tsim Sha Tsui to the Star Ferry Pier.” Designing Hong Kong’s co-founder Paul Zimmerman shares her view. “It’s just so frustrating crossing the road,” he says. At the intersection of subways near Salisbury Road, we encountered Sam Brown, an American tourist traveling with his wife. They had lost their way trying to get to the Star Ferry Pier. “This is quite a complicated system for tourists,” he says. “This is surprising—I found everything else so easy and simple in Hong Kong.”

So why is this road so hard to cross? Salisbury Road, a major route linking Nathan Road to the Star Ferry Pier, where the bus terminal is, was once constantly congested because of the huge amount of bus and taxi traffic there—and with the crossing in place just outside of The Peninsula, it just made the congestion even worse. In 1999, the government decided to remove the crossing and widen the road for better traffic flow. As a result, pedestrians could no longer cross at street level, and instead, must use a subway tunnel in order to reach the other side of the road. “They only think about the road capacity for cars and public transport, but never the rights of pedestrians,” Zimmerman says. “So to keep the same road capacity they chose to remove all pedestrians from the street level. Now, nobody can cross the road.”

The subway, which goes from one end of Nathan Road next to The Peninsula, then detours to the basement of the Sheraton to cross Salisbury, exits at the New World Properties’ underground Palace Mall next to the Space Museum. The mall, built in 1997, was the city’s first major underground mall, but suffered from a lack of visitors because of its location. In 1999, just when the government was restructuring the traffic flow in the area, New World worked with the government to build a subway from Nathan Road, diverting pedestrians wishing to cross Salisbury to the mall (where SOGO Department Store is now located). We don’t think you need help here to connect the dots. “The design of the subway is very complicated—and it actually leads you to a shopping mall,” Zimmerman says.

But according to the government, the construction of subways to replace street-level crossings is in fact for our own good. The Highways Department’s stance is, the subways in Tsim Sha Tsui “enhance pedestrian safety at the busy junctions.” An environmental impact assessment report submitted by the MTR Corporation states that constructing more subways underneath Tsim Sha Tsui would limit the impact of the roadside pollution on pedestrians. The report was submitted to get the government to approve further construction of subways linking the two MTR stations to different parts of the district. A new subway was opened two months ago, linking Tsim Sha Tsui East station to various locations on the west side, including The Cultural Centre (more in box “Cross Purposes,” right). The Highways Department says that a “more comprehensive walkway network plan for Tsim Sha Tsui” will be completed, and that the pedestrians will then “be able to enjoy the pollution-free and covered underground pedestrian network in Tsim Sha Tsui.” Zimmerman comments that such measures are usually supported by the District Council.

However, is this really an improvement? The Civic Party interviewed 103 passersby last year to see how many people actually enjoy crossing Salisbury using the subway. Seventy-five of the 103 respondents said they would prefer a street-level crossing over a subway because it is much easier for them, and that the road signs and complicated network of subways confuse pedestrians and tourists. “It’s just across the street but I can’t get across simply anymore—I have to go down and up and down again,” says Ching Lee, a merchandiser trying to get to her next work appointment in Star House from Sheraton Hotel, located on the same side of Salisbury Road just a few blocks down. Jeremy Wong, a student traveling to the Space Museum with his classmates from the MTR station, is puzzled by the subways. “It changes constantly—I swear the route was different last year,” he says. “If even students can’t understand the network here, how could the older generations?”