Of planes, ferries and bridges

It’s been an interesting few days for Macau’s foreign investment community, which appears to be increasingly concerned about the buildout of infrastructure and public transportation services.

On the positive side, it was announced that geological survey work has begun on the proposed US$5 billion cross-delta bridge, which would link Macau to Hong Kong in three sections, including a tunnel in the middle. The bridge will eventually cut travel time between the two Special Administrative Regions to just 20 minutes, and will make Macau an especially attractive short hop from the Hong Kong International Airport. It will also obviously have an impact on ferry services, which currently take an hour. Financing has not yet been finalized for the project, however, and estimates on completion have been pushed out beyond 2015.

Within Macau, plans for a tunnel between the peninsula and Taipa island are proceeding. A proposal has been submitted to the central government, but an actual start date still looks a long way off as a new tender will have to be launched after a public survey and environmental impact study are conducted. If the cross-delta bridge brings more traffic to the peninsula (in 2015), the tunnel will be sorely needed by then to move traffic across to where more than two-thirds of Macau’s hotel rooms will be located – on the Cotai Strip.

The Cotai Strip already has transportation challenges of its own, however. It is understood that the Venetian’s CotaiJet ferry service is ready to start night sailings between the Taipa Temporary Ferry Terminal and Hong Kong, but is awaiting the allocation of berths at the Hong Kong Macau Ferry Terminal. Foot-dragging by Hong Kong’s maritime administration officials, ironically, is making it extremely difficult for Hong Kong visitors to Macau to get home in the evenings, as has been witnessed first hand by Destination Macau. Arrive at the Macau ferry terminal on a Friday afternoon and you are unlikely to get a ticket for the next two to three hours.

But it is in the aviation sector that perhaps the biggest noise is being made about the restrictions holding back the development of international transportation links to Macau. Con Korfiatis, CEO of Viva Macau, has hit out at the red tape that he says is stunting the growth of Macau’s aviation industry, denying Viva the right to fly routes that are instead being gobbled up by foreign carriers. Macau aviation officials have held open the route between Singapore and Macau for more than a year, for instance, on the premise that another Macau-based airline would exercise the rights to fly the route. But the airline in question is not yet even operational, nor does it appear to have given an indication that it will be anytime soon, Korfiatis says. In the meantime, two Singaporean carriers have started flying on the route.

Read extracts of the speech here.