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Habitat International 28 (2004) 89–102

Accessibility of workers in a compact city:

the case of Hong Kong
Joseph C.Y. Laua, Catherine C.H. Chiub,*
a
Centre of Urban Planning and Environmental Management, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
b
Department of Applied Social Studies, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Received 2 September 2002; received in revised form 17 November 2002; accepted 8 January 2003

Abstract

This article investigates the relationship between the accessibility of workers and the compact city
structure in Hong Kong. We are particularly concerned with the influences of land-use policy and public
transport systems development on the accessibility of workers. We construct a model which incorporates
factors such as transfers in work trips, employment status, income, gender, marital status and living in
accessible areas to account for the accessibility of workers. Our findings show that whether a worker lives in
an accessible area or not does not affect his or her accessibility, rather transfers in work trips have the
greatest impact, indicating that variability in accessibility to jobs is different in a compact city structure
with a hierarchical transport network from that in cities in Europe and the US. Although income is not a
significant factor affecting the accessibility of workers, workers in Hong Kong have to bear high travel costs
on transfers. Also noteworthy is the finding that married workers spend longer times on work trips than the
workers who are single. It might be attributed to the fact that a high proportion of households employ
foreign domestic helpers to take care of their housework so that they could spend more time on work trips.
r 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Compact city; Hierarchical transport network; Location accessibility; Person accessibility; Transfers in
public transport; Travel costs

1. Introduction

Accessibility of workers to employment is always the focus of urban transport planning. Most
urban transport studies investigate the accessibility problems of workers in cities with dispersed
land-use structure, involving work trips that are dominated by private cars. Since city structure

*Corresponding author. Fax: +852-2788-8960.

E-mail address: catherine.chiu@cityu.edu.hk (C.C.H. Chiu).

0197-3975/03/$ - see front matter r 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0197-3975(03)00015-8
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and social development in most Asian cities are different from those of the cities in the United
States and Europe, some research evidence on urban transport studies might not hold true for
Asian cities (Dimitriou, 1992). Thus, the purpose of this study is to use Hong Kong as a case to
provide some research evidence to throw new light on the accessibility of workers in the compact
Asian cities. Our major premise is that Hong Kong has an efficient transport system but one that
requires workers to make transfers to reach their workplace. Having to make transfers in their
work trips is the main factor in affecting workers’ accessibility to jobs.
Cities exist because of economies of agglomeration associated with industrial and trade
activities. In Asia, labour productivity is typically higher in cities than in rural areas and this
creates wide income inequality between cities and rural areas. Poverty and high birth rates in rural
areas cause inflows of huge numbers of workers from rural areas to cities, which lead to rapid
urbanization, high population density and formation of compact city structure in Asian cities
(World Bank, 2001). The degree of urban compactness in Asian cities has intensified as a result of
travel patterns and modal split of workers to work places. Most workers in Asian cities cannot
afford to own private vehicles and they rely on public transport services or walking to work
places. High population density and inadequate transport infrastructure in Asian cities also halt
the growth of private vehicles. The dominance of public transport slows down city expansion and
compact mixed land-use structures are developed to facilitate the operations of mass transit in
Asian cities, like Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok and Delhi. On the other hand, cities in the
United States and Europe experience high economic growth and workers earn higher income and
can afford to drive private vehicles to their work places. Consequently, cities in the western
countries experience urban sprawl problems and the land-use structures are dispersed with better-
off residents moving away from the urban centres to the sub-urban areas (Medlock III & Soligo,
2002; Dieleman & Dijst, 1999; Owen, 1972).
The city of Hong Kong lies off the coast of Mainland China adjoining Guangdong province. In
1997, it was returned to China after 155 years of British colonial rule and became a Special
Administrative Region (SAR) of China. The physical size of Hong Kong is 1097 km2, built-up
areas accounts for less than 20% of total size of the city that are mostly reclaimed land and are
sited along main transport networks. It is one of most densely populated global cities in the world.
The population size of Hong Kong was 6.7 million and average population density 6237 persons
per km2 in 2001. The most densely populated areas are the urban deprived neighbourhoods, such
as Kwun Tong, Shamshuipo and Yau Tsim Mong (Hong Kong Census and Statistics
Department, 2001a, see also Fig. 1). Big public transport interchanges and main roads in the
older urban areas, (such as Nathan Road in Mongkok and Queen’s Road West in the Western
districts), not only provide good accessibility to the poor in the urban deprived areas, but also
high passenger flows for the revitalization of retail and services business in the deprived urban
neighbourhoods (Tay, Lau, & Leung, 1999). In 1960s, the Government decentralized population
from the urban areas to the new towns, and as a result, about 50% of the population lived in new
towns in 2001 (Census and Statistics Department, 2001a). Over 80% of job opportunities are
concentrated in the urban areas and most the workers in Hong Kong use pubic transport. In 1993,
the average travel time was 59.6 min for workers in new towns and 41.3 min for workers in the
urban areas. The shorter travel times for workers are mainly due to the compact land-use
structure and efficient public transport services in Hong Kong (Hong Kong Transport
Department, 1993; Lau, 1997, see also Fig. 2).
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Fig. 1. Satellite image of the older Yau Tsim Mong districts and reclaimed land in Western Kowloon, Hong Kong.
Source: Geocarto International Centre, Hong Kong (1999).

In the next section, after a brief review of the literature on accessibility to jobs, we present
transport expenses involving transfers in Hong Kong, in order to underline the impact of transfers
in affecting location accessibility and the economic burden on workers. This is followed by a
discussion on factors affecting person accessibility. Then a survey on accessibility of workers in
Hong Kong will be presented and discussed.

2. Accessibility to jobs: location accessibility and person accessibility

Accessibility is the ability of an individual to take part in a particular activity or set of activities.
According to Odoki, Kerali and Santorini (2001, p. 602),
Accessibility is a function of the mobility of the individual, of the spatial location of activity
opportunities relative to the starting point of the individual, and of the times at which the
activities are available.
Accessibility of a worker to a job depends on the connecting transport systems, the location of
the worker’s job and housing, and the time available to the worker for specific activities (Odoki,
Kerali, & Santorini, 2001). It is not only influenced by the interactions between land-use structure
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Fig. 2. Transport system of Hong Kong.

and transportation, but also by the personal aspects of the workers, such as gender, age,
education, their household roles and income. Accordingly, we could investigate the accessibility of
workers on two aspects: location accessibility and person accessibility (Dijst, Jayet, & Thomas,
2002).
The location accessibility of workers is affected by a number of factors, such as whether there is
spatial mismatch between housing and jobs, and the decision made by workers to trade off
between accessibility and rents. It is a common phenomenon that rent costs are higher in areas
along mass railway lines and public transport fares are unaffordable to many workers who live in
new towns in many Asian cities (Alonso, 1964; World Bank, 2001; Hsu, & Guo, 2001; Lau, 1997;
Willoughby, 2001). Low-income workers have to trade off proximity to employment and easy
availability of transportation for less living space and a poorer environment in the urban deprived
neighborhoods. The intensity of influence of the trade-off phenomenon is more significant for the
workers who are captives of public transport in Asian cities than the workers with high car
dependency rate in Western cities. The workers in the United States who drive cars have higher
levels of accessibility and they tend to live in less compact residential environments with lower rent
costs (Dieleman, Dijst, & Burghouwt, 2002). In Asian cities, redevelopment policies always
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influence the accessibility of the workers. Drastic urban redevelopment and excessive
decentralization will give rise to urban area depopulation and result in long travel journeys
from new towns to the central business districts in the urban areas, as is the case of Singapore
(Willoughby, 2001). On the other hand, improvements on public transport network integration
and investments on infrastructure could revitalize the older urban centre and turn the areas into
job opportunity centres for the workers (Priemus, & Konings, 2001).
Concerning person accessibility, income and gender are main determinants. Access to
public transport is particularly important to lower-income workers (Sanchez, 2002). Women
in two-worker households always spend less time on commuting than men due to differences in
wages, work schedules and household responsibilities (Sermons & Koppelman, 2001). In the
case of Hong Kong, as will be discussed in the section following the next, other factors
such as employment status and marital status will also have significant effect on accessibility to
work.

3. Transfers and fares in public transport in Hong Kong

Public transport is dominant in Hong Kong. In 1993, public transport services accounted for
80% of total trips and these services would account for almost 90% of all trips in Hong Kong by
2016 (Hong Kong Transport Department, 1993, 2000). Main public transport services in Hong
Kong include Kowloon-Canton Railway (KCR), Mass Transit Railway (MTR), Kowloon Motor
Bus (KMB), Citybus, New World First Bus (NWFB), taxis, green and red minibuses, ferries and
tramways. In 2001, buses and minibuses accounted for 48.3% and the MTRs accounted for 25%
of total work trips respectively; while taxis accounted for 1.4% only because this mode is too
expensive for most of the workers in Hong Kong. Twelve per cent of workers chose walking as
their mode of transport to jobs while only 7% of workers drive private cars (Hong Kong Census
and Statistics Department, 2001a).
Public transport services in Hong Kong are structured into a vertical hierarchy of bus, mini-
bus, tram and taxi services to feed into higher capacity trains (the KCR and MTR). To facilitate
this integration of public transport services, the Government adopts an electronic common
ticketing system, called ‘Octopus’ that provides great convenience for workers to transfer among
different modes of public transport during their work trips. Also, bus route planning depends
mainly on government pressure not to compete with the MTR or KCR (Legislative Council,
2002a). For example, bus routes connecting Tseung Kwan O new town and the urban areas had to
be cut when the new MTR Tseung Kwan O Extension line commenced service in August, 2002.
Under this mode of integration of public transport services, the workers have to pay higher fares
on inter-modal transfers than direct work trips, especially those workers who live in inaccessible
districts or new towns because they have to pay fares on each additional transfer for their work
trips. In fact, this is one of the transport planning problems in densely populated global cities
which are dominant by public transport (Gwilliam, 2001).
In order to highlight the problems of this hierarchical integration of public transport on the
accessibility of workers in Hong Kong, the first author compiled fare tables of different public
transport modes on several major interchanges in the urban areas in June 2002. Based on these
fare tables, a chart was compiled which shows the expenses of work trips in the average
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two-worker household income scenario, who need to make one transfer for employment. As
shown in Fig. 3, the taxi mode is beyond the affordability of average income workers to include in
their work trips because the fares of taxi mode account for 21–41% of average household
incomes. On average, most of the workers paid about 8% of their monthly income for their work
trips while those workers who took the MTR had to pay up 9–11% of their monthly household
incomes. Also, those workers who live in the new towns and had to cross the harbour to reach
their employment had to pay the higher travel expenses on their work trips. In fact, the results
shown in Fig. 3 are in line with the data released by the recent consumer price index survey carried
out by the Government. In the 1999–2000 Government household expenditure survey, transport
accounted for 9% of household expenditure (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department,
2001b). The similarity of government data and the results in Fig. 3, which are based on work trips
with one transfer, reflects that most of the work trips in Hong Kong require transfers. This
problem would be more serious for the lower-income workers. It is found that the travel expenses
for lower-income households, who do not and cannot afford to take a taxi, accounts for 12% of
their monthly income for those who live in the urban areas and 16% in the new towns. These low-
income households constitute the bottom 25% of all households. A study by the Social Welfare
Department shows that there were 7% of street sleepers in the urban areas who originally lived in
the housing estates in the new towns. They trade off good living environment in new towns for the
vicinity of their employment in the urban areas (Legislative Council, 2002b; Ming Pao Daily, June
11, 2002).

Fig. 3. Share of work trip expenses on average household income (two-worker households with one transfer) Sources:
the fare table is based on the following public transport routes: all MTR and KCR routes; Green mini-bus 35 M, bus
routes include 8X, 23A, 10, 15, 720, 97, 37 at the Queensway MTR interchange and 52X, 118, 62R, 88 M, 81 M, 67X,
59X, 44, 93 K at the Shamshuipo and Kowloon Tong interchanges; Green mini-bus no.12, and other red mini-bus
routes from Mongkok to Kowloon city district at the MongKok interchanges. The household incomes are based on
Census 2001 (Census and Statistics Department, 2001a) and it is supposed that workers normally work 24 days each
month.
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For 4 years consecutively since 1999, the consumer price index (CPI), which includes housing,
food, clothing, electricity and durable goods, in Hong Kong fell about 12.5%. On the other hand,
CPI for transport recorded significant increases. It was mainly because the major public transport
operators, e.g., the KMB, MTR and KCR, refused to reduce fares (Hong Kong Census and
Statistics Department, 2001b, 2002). Even though the Government subsidizes MTR fares by
allowing the operators to develop properties above their stations, the costs of public transport
fares are still unaffordable to many low-income workers (Lau, 1997). That transport fares are too
high in Hong Kong is now a consensus in Hong Kong; even the newly appointed Secretary for
Environment, Transport and Works, on her first day to assume duty, mentioned that the public
transport fares are unaffordable by low-income workers (Ming Pao Daily, August 3 and 4, 2002),
the first time ever for a principal officer to make such a comment.
In 2001, 49.6% of total labor force resided in the new towns and 50.4% in urban areas. Since
most of the manufacturing industry jobs have been relocated to Mainland China to seek lower
labor costs and most of the service employments are located in urban areas, over 20% of the
workforce in the new towns has to travel to the urban areas each day for their employment. Some
of them (about 8%) have to travel across the harbor to reach their work places on the Hong Kong
Island (Census and Statistics Department, 2001a). Since most of the job opportunities are located
in the urban center, the spatial mismatch between jobs and housing does not influence the workers
in the urban areas of Hong Kong, but it influences the workers who live in the new towns.
High public transport fares bid up land rents in the urban areas. Land prices of new towns are
about 65% that of the urban areas in 2002 (South China Morning Post, April 24, 2002). Those
workers who find public transport fares unaffordable if they live in new towns choose to remain in
urban slums even when the Government offers to re-settle them in the new towns. These workers
trade off housing space in the new towns for jobs in the urban areas because of high travel costs.
This phenomenon confirms the trade-off theory between accessibility to employment and living
environment.
Not only do workers in the new towns have to make transfers in their work trips, many workers
residing in the old urban areas have to make transfers during their work trips because the
Government refuses to build mass transit railway lines to those older urban neighbourhoods
where there is population decline and thus the passenger demands are not financially viable. For
example, the Kowloon City district lacks a mass transit railway system and the external
transportation for people living in the district is very inconvenient. Workers living in Kowloon
City rely on buses and mini-buses as their means of external transport. It increases the traffic
expenses of the ‘poor’ urban workers because some of them have to transfer to the MTR for long
distance work trips (Legislative Council, 1999).
Hence, due to hierarchical integration of the transport network and the compact city structure,
location accessibility to jobs in Hong Kong is affected more by whether workers need to make
transfers in their work trips than by the district they reside in.

4. Person accessibility factors

In the above, we have highlighted the impact of transfers in work trips on accessibility to jobs.
We now move on to examine the person accessibility factors.
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Hong Kong is one of several global cities in Asia which is suffering from the adverse impact of
the financial crisis in Asia. Major segments of the Hong Kong economy, including the property
market, the stock market, the retail and sales markets and the tourist industry are all affected.
Signs of economic recession are obvious, with a record high unemployment and under-
employment rates that increased from 2.2–7.7% and 1.1–2.9% from 1997 to 2002 (Hong Kong
Census and Statistics Department, 2002). The underemployed part-time workers will less likely be
willing to travel long distances to far away work locations due to their time constraints and
limited income, while people with full-time employment whose jobs command higher wages can
afford to travel long distance which involves transfers. While it appears to be reasonable to think
that casual workers are also constrained by their unstable income to afford long commuting
times, the case in Hong Kong requires special consideration. Casual workers have longer travel
times than part-time workers because most casual workers who do not work in permanent jobs
are in the construction industry (Hong Kong Census and Statistic Department, 2001c). They
would travel to the work sites regardless of the distance. In summary, in terms of employment
status, people in full-time employment and casual workers would spend more time in their work
trips than part-time workers.
Workers with higher incomes have better accessibility to jobs because they can take
faster transport modes to their employment, such as private cars and the MTR. Lower-
income workers, on the other hand, are only able to take slower transport modes, such
as buses.
Over the last few decades of economic development, increasingly more women participated in
the workforce of Hong Kong. Many female workers manage to secure jobs in services and
knowledge-based fields. This means that the number of two-worker households in Hong Kong is
increasing. However, the time pressure for men and women is different. While there is equal
pressure for men and women to devote more time to their jobs, the family demands are different
to men and women. Most household chores are still the responsibility of women (Chu & Leung,
1995), so they have the double burdens of work and home. As a result, women will choose jobs
that require a shorter commuting time than ones which are far away from their home. Men are
less likely to be affected by this time constraint, rather they are more likely to be pushed by their
role as the main bread-winner in the household to commute longer distances to work if the
incomes are higher.
Many two-worker households in Hong Kong employ foreign domestic helpers to take
care of their daily housework so that they could spend more time traveling to their jobs.
In 2001, foreign domestic helpers accounted for about 3.1% of Hong Kong’s population
(about 210,000 persons) and about 10% of households had full-time foreign domestic
helpers. Some low-income households rely on their relatives to take care of their children
so that they could find full-time jobs (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, 2001a; Lau,
1997). Thus, factors such as domestic helpers and the close traditional Chinese family
network in Hong Kong improve the accessibility of many married workers to jobs as far as the
time constraint is concerned. It is different from many cities in the US and Europe,
where domestic helpers are not common and the family network is not so close in many
households. Consequently, Hong Kong married workers would travel longer distances
and have wider choices of jobs compared with the married workers in the cities in the US
and Europe.
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5. The model and hypotheses of the study

Based on the review of the literature on accessibility and the circumstances in Hong Kong, we
construct a model of accessibility to jobs, using travel time as the dependent variable which is an
indicator of accessibility: the less time one spends on commuting to work, the more accessible he
or she is. The model incorporates six independent variables, namely, transfers in work trips,
employment status, income, gender, marital status and living in accessible areas. The last variable
is included as a necessary control so as to test the significance of the other five variables in
influencing accessibility to jobs in a compact city. We derive five hypotheses, as follows:
(1) Workers who need to transfer to another mode of transport in commuting to work experience
longer travel times than workers who do not need to make transfers.
(2) Full time and casual workers spend a longer time traveling to work than part-time workers
do.
(3) The travel time of higher-income workers is shorter than that of the lower-income workers in
Hong Kong.
(4) Male workers spend a longer time traveling to work than their female counterparts.
(5) Married workers have a longer travel time to work than workers who are single or
divorced.

6. The data and analysis

The data for analysis were collected in February and March, 2002 in Hong Kong, using
structured close-ended interviews via a computer-aided-telephone interviewing (CATI) system.
The respondents were employed persons aged 18 or over, selected randomly from the 1.8 million
residential numbers scanned from the telephone directory. A total of 1591 households were
reached and 798 individuals were interviewed, resulting in a response rate of 50%. All interviews
were conducted in Cantonese (the spoken dialect in Hong Kong).
We tested the hypotheses by means of a regression model. The statistics software package SPSS
was used to run the regressions and descriptive statistics. The variables are measured in the
following way:
* Travel time is measured by the one-way travel time (in minutes) to employment.
* Transfers in work trips means that the respondents have to make multi-leg trips during their
daily work trips. Direct work trips include workers who take a private car, public transport
modes and walking directly to employment. Transfer to other mode¼ 1; direct work trip¼ 0:
* Employment status is coded 1 ¼full-time or casual work; 0 ¼part-time work.
* The monthly personal income of workers is coded into 7 categories: less than or equal to
US$640 ¼ 1; between US$641 to US$1280=2; between US$1281 to US$1920=3; US$1923 to
US$2564=4; US$2565 to US$3205=5; US$3206 to US$3846=6; equal to and over
US$3850=7.
* Gender is coded 1 ¼man; 0 ¼woman.
* Marital status of workers is coded into two categories, married or living with partner¼ 1; single
or divorced¼ 0:
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* The living districts are coded into 2 categories: less accessible urban districts or new towns¼ 0;
accessible districts or districts near the MTR lines¼ 1:

7. Descriptive analysis of the survey data

The average travel time of the 798 respondents is 42 min with the standard deviation 28 min.
The average age of the married workers is 42.5 and the workers who are either single or divorced
are 29. The modal split of the respondents shows that nearly 79% of the respondents take public
transport, and 13% of them adopt walking as the mode of transport to job places. Unlike cities in
Europe and the US, only 5% of the respondents in Hong Kong drive private cars to jobs
everyday. Twenty-one percent of the respondents have to transfer to other mode of public
transport in their work trips, with most of the transfers involving railways (see Fig. 4).
Restructuring of mini-bus, taxi and bus services to feed into higher capacity trunk links (the MTR
and KCR) is a central part of an integrated urban transport system in Hong Kong. However, the
absence of integrated fares and ticketing arrangements means an increase in fares for those forced
from single- to multiple-leg trips because of the transfers. In order to avoid transfers, many low-
income workers might choose to live near their work places in urban slums. Public buses and the
MTRs are the dominant modes of transport in the modal split to jobs, which account for 33%
and 14%, respectively. Buses and mini-buses account for 32% and 7% of the work trips made by
the respondents, respectively. Other public transport modes, such as taxis, trams and ferries, have
insignificant shares in the mode split to jobs in Hong Kong.
Regarding gender differences in modal split, 7.3% of the male respondents drive to their
employment while only 1.6% of the female respondents do so. Also, there are 9.5% of male
respondents who walk to their job places while there are over 17% of female respondents who use
walking as their mode of transport to jobs. The figures indicate that there is a gender gap in modal
choice.

Fig. 4. Mode split of the respondents.

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8. Results of the regression analysis

The results of the regression analysis are presented in Table 1. The R2 of the regression model is
0.116, that means approximately about 12% of the variability in the dependent variable, travel
time to jobs of the respondents, is explained by the independent variables. The F value is 17.182,
which indicates that the model is statistically significant. Four independent variables, namely,
having to make transfers in work trips, employment status, gender and marital status have
significant effects on travel time of workers in Hong Kong. The standardized beta coefficients
show that having to make transfers has the greatest effect, followed by employment status, gender
and marital status. Moreover the direction of the relationships is as hypothesized, thus confirming
Hypotheses 1, 2, 4 and 5, meaning that employees in Hong Kong who need to take transfers, who
are employed in full-time or casual jobs, who are male, and who are married, travel a longer time
to employment. The result that married workers who spend longer travel times than workers who
are single is different from the research findings in the cities of the US and Europe. This is mainly
because many two-worker households employ full-time foreign domestic helpers or rely on their
relatives to take care of their daily housework in Hong Kong. Consequently, many married
workers can afford to spend more time on commuting to their jobs.
As expected, the control variable of whether one lives in an accessible area has no significant
effect on accessibility to jobs. However, contrary to our hypothesis (Hypothesis 3), personal
income turns out to be an insignificant variable in the regression. The result probably reflects the
travel pattern of workers in compact cities. Spatial proximity between locations and an integrated
public transport system improve people’s access to employment and minimize the travel time
differences between the higher income and lower income workers. This finding shows that as far
as travel time is concerned, accessibility to employment is more equal in compact cities than in
cities in the United States, such as Chicago and Los Angeles. Unlike some cities in the United
States where many low-income workers could not afford to drive private cars and suffer from
mobility problems to jobs, the dominance of public transport in Hong Kong brings about more
equal employment opportunities.

Table 1
Regression model of variations in travel time in Hong Kong, 2002*
B Beta T Sig.
Transfer of mode 19.865 0.289 8.612 0.000
Employment status 9.475 0.112 3.059 0.002
Personal income 0.509 0.033 0.894 0.372
Gender 6.079 0.109 3.183 0.002
Marital status 4.499 0.079 2.340 0.020
Accessible/inaccessible living districts 1.48E-02 0.027 0.797 0.428

R2 0.116
Adjusted R2 0.109
F -value 17.182
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We note that the R2 of the regression is rather low. This could be largely due to the limitation in
our survey questions. The R2 would be larger if household characteristics of the respondents, non-
work trips and the traffic conditions are included in the measures, as these factors all affect the
time spent on work trips. Firstly, although we argue that the presence of domestic helpers and
close family networks would allow workers in two-earner households to afford more time in
traveling, we had not measured them directly. Secondly, a recent research study finds that the time
spent on non-work trips will affect the allocation of time for traveling to work (Srinivasan &
Ferreira, 2002), the more time spent on the former, the less time will be available for the latter.
Hence, if we had included non-work trips as a variable, the explained variance might be larger.
Thirdly, inadequate road space and traffic congestion in the urban areas of Hong Kong could
influence travel time. Although it would be difficult to directly measure their effects on travel
times in a survey like ours, it is still possible to gauge this effect by asking the respondents for their
perceptions of the degree to which these factors have affected their travel time. It is reasonable to
think people living in different areas will have different experiences and their responses
to questions on perceptions related to the effect of road space and congestion on their travel
time will vary. If added to the regression model, these variables might hold some explanatory
power. In summary, in future surveys, household characteristics, non-work trips and perceptions
on factors affecting travel time could be included and the explained variance is expected
to be higher.

9. Conclusion

In this paper, Hong Kong is taken as a case study for the accessibility of workers in compact
cities. The results of the study show that compact land-use promotes the operations of public
transport services and enhances the dominance of public transport for the work trips. The short
distances between residential areas and employment locations, high population density and the
diverse provision of public transport modes minimize the travel time differences between the rich
and the poor, and between the workers who live near the railway lines and those who live in
inaccessible districts. The survey results confirm that compact cities with efficient integration and
performance of public transport could provide higher levels of equality on accessibility to
employment opportunities, between those who drive to employment and those who are the
captives of public transport, and between those who live in the new towns and those who live in
the urban areas, rather than like the workers in cities with dispersed land-use, such as in the
United States. However, the integration of public transport modes and the high percentage of
workers who need to take transfers to other modes of transport increase the costs of work trips.
This in fact is one of the most pertinent problems in transport network planning in world cities
which are dominated by public transport (Gwilliam, 2001).
It is therefore necessary for the Hong Kong Government to co-ordinate and to reduce the costs
on fares for transfers. We suggest that public transport network in Hong Kong should be divided
into zones and fares should be charged according to travel distances of the passengers, not
according to the number of transfers. Urban redevelopment should provide adequate space for
public transport interchanges and road networks so as to reduce traffic congestion and improve
accessibility of workers.
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J.C.Y. Lau, C.C.H. Chiu / Habitat International 28 (2004) 89–102 101

Acknowledgements

The research on which this paper is based is supported by the Strategic Research Grant (Project
No. 7001250) of the City University of Hong Kong. We would like to thank two anonymous
reviewers for their invaluable comments and Naomi Lo for her research assistance.

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