CROSS BAY LINK – PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT IN PLANNING URBAN

INFRASTRUCTURE

M. HOOTON1*†, P. CHANG1, M. CARTER1, S.Y. CHAN1, C.K. CHU2 and W.M. WONG2

1
Ove Arup & Partners HK Ltd
2
Civil Engineering and Development Department, Government of the Hong Kong SAR

ABSTRACT
The Cross Bay Link (CBL) will be a bridge across Junk Bay in Tseung Kwan O (TKO) New Town,
Hong Kong. It will connect the south-eastern part of TKO with the territorial-wide strategic road
network of Hong Kong in order to cater for the projected traffic flow generated from the future
developments in this growing new town. In addition to a dual two-lane carriageway, CBL will also
carry a footway and cycle path, which is the first of its kind for a marine viaduct in Hong Kong.

The road link will be approximately 1.8km long and the span of the main bridge is approximately
200m. Because of the prominent location, there is a strong public aspiration to build a landmark
structure. The Civil Engineering and Development Department (CEDD) decided to conduct a series
of public engagement activities to solicit the public’s support on the preferred design option of the
bridge.

Two stages of public engagement works for the feature bridge design were completed from July
2009 to June 2010. In the first stage, a design ideas invitation event was organized to invite
professionals and the public to contribute design ideas and concepts on the form, appearance and
aesthetics of the CBL. The results were incorporated into six design options prepared by the
project engineering consultants for the second stage public engagement. Apart from the technical
evaluation, the selection of the preferred option included a public survey to gauge their preference
on the six design options.
The paper will describe the public engagement process, the development of the design options, as
well as the further evaluation, which was carried out to determine the preferred option for
preliminary design development.

Keywords: Bridge, design, public-engagement, arch bridge.

*
Corresponding author: Email: martin.hooton@arup.com
†
Presenter: Email: martin.hooton@arup.com

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1. INTRODUCTION
Junk Bay (Figure 1) is a tranquil bay located to the east of Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong. The
merchant junk ships of the past that once frequented the bay, and hence gave its name, have long
since gone, but it is hoped that the provision of a new landmark road crossing, with associated
recreational features, will bring new life to the bay as a leisure facility for cycling and walking,
whilst also providing a key link in the highway network.

On the shores of Junk bay is the Tseung Kwan O (TKO) New Town with major residential
developments in the north and TKO Industrial Estate in the south-east. Since the early
developments in the 1980s, the
population of TKO is expected to
ultimately increase to 450,000. The
new bridge across Junk Bay, Cross
Bay Link (CBL), will carry a dual
two-lane carriageway to provide Cross Bay Link
Cross Bay Link
relief to the anticipated congestion
in the roads in TKO (Maunsell
Figure 1: TKO New Town, Junk Bay and CBL
2005). The bridge will also carry a
footway and cycle path, which is the first of its kind for a marine viaduct in Hong Kong. In view
of its prominent location in Junk Bay, an earlier feasibility study (Maunsell 2005) recommended to
design the main span of CBL as a feature bridge. The purpose was to provide an aesthetically
appealing bridge for the bay area and to provide a strong visual identity for TKO.

Ove Arup and Partners Hong Kong Limited was employed by CEDD as the project design
consultants to undertake the investigation and preliminary design of CBL in March 2009.

2. PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT PROCESS

Traditionally, most government procured infrastructure projects in Hong Kong are designed by
consultants, but this method would have limitations for arriving at a landmark bridge design with
strong public support. It was realized at an early stage of the project that through early public
engagement, the opinions and reactions of the local community could be taken on board. The five
primary objectives of the public engagement process were to:

• raise public awareness of the CBL project and to promote a sense of community involvement
among TKO residents;

• invite the public and stakeholders, including the District Council, community organizations,
green groups and professional groups, etc, to express their visions, wishes and concepts, for the
development of bridge options;

• gauge their preference on alternative bridge options for CBL;

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• obtain their support for the preferred bridge option and project implementation; and

• enhance the image of CEDD and the Hong Kong SAR Government.
The public engagement was undertaken in parallel with the project design activities. This parallel
work flow is indicated on the following chart, where public participation events coincided with
traditional engineering design development processes.

Core Engineering Design Activities Public Engagement Activities

Requirements & Constraints Review Public Consultation Workshops

Initial Concepts Development Design Ideas Invitation Event

Options Evaluation Public Survey

Preliminary Design Public Exhibition

Figure 2: Public Engagement Process

While the public engagement process is partnering the public in the development and evaluation of
the bridge design, it should be stressed that the responsibility for the final decision remains with the
project design consultants and CEDD, whom maintain the key role of balancing the technical
considerations with the public interest.

3. DEVELOPMENT OF DESIGN OPTIONS

At the beginning of the study a series of public consultation workshops were held to collect their
views and aspirations for CBL, and where feasible, these were included in the overall project
requirements.

The project team identified early concepts for the feature bridge, which for navigation purposes
required a minimum span length of between 160m and 200m, depending on the marine navigation
arrangement. At this stage, several cable stayed bridge and arch concepts were considered including
a butterfly arch option, which later evolved into the Eternity Arch. It was considered at the time that
a concrete box girder option could not satisfy the requirement for a feature main bridge.

With the design parameters established, a design ideas invitation event called “My vision for Cross
Bay Link” was held in July-November 2009 to invite professionals and the public to contribute
ideas for CBL. The event attracted a positive response from local residents and professionals with a
total of 48 entries. The event was not organized in a traditional design competition format i.e. one
winning entry is the reference design, rather, twelve winning entries were chosen – 6 from the
professional section and 6 from the open section (Figure 3). The reason for this was to maximize

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the use of multiple ideas for further design developments and to allow greater flexibility for second
stage public engagement.

Figure 3: Winning entries from the Design Ideas Invitation Event

It can be seen from Table 1 that cabled stayed bridges were the most popular structural form
amongst both categories; whilst arch bridges also contributed a significant proportion of the entries.

Arch Cable-stayed Suspension Truss Girder Unknown Total

Professional Group 6 8 1 1 0 0 16

Open Group 9 14 0 0 2 7 32

Table 1 – Bridge forms submitted in the Design Ideas Invitation Event

Although arch bridges are commonly found all over the world there are no major arch bridges in
Hong Kong to date. The strong public aspiration for Hong Kong’s first arch bridge solution in Junk
Bay is a strong call from this event.

Until this point, the focus of assessment had been on creativity, aesthetics, harmony with the
environment and fulfillment of the basic functional requirements. Some of the winning entries
required engineering input for them to be technically viable schemes. After an initial screening
based on technical considerations including the viabilities to build, operate and maintain, six bridge
design options (Figure 4) were developed from the concepts collected from the first stage of public
engagement for detailed evaluation and next stage public engagement. Four of them were cable
stayed bridges and the remaining two were arch bridges. At this stage, preliminary evaluation of the
structural performance, had been completed before the next stage public engagement to ensure that
all the design options were structurally feasible and the information (e.g. photomontages, drawings,
design information, etc) presented to the public would be close to the final product as if they were
actually built.

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The Bow is a 200m span cable-stayed bridge with a The Alliance Bridge is an extradosed bridge with
single curved inverted Y tower form. three 160m main spans.

The Sail has a pair of 160m cable-stayed spans
either side of a central tower. Unique to this option,
the cycleway/footway are slightly offset and below the
highway carriageway to allow pedestrians to enjoy
views of both sides of the bridge.
Link with Wings is another 200m span cable-stayed
bridge, but in this case two outwardly leaning towers
with crossing stays in the centre span region. A novel
feature of this bridge is the transversely offset towers
and cable planes.

Eternity Arch is a 200m span tied arch bridge with The Gateway is another 200m span tied arch bridge
two outwardly leaning arches and carefully sculpted with a single diagonal arch that straddles the
piers to create an eternal never-ending loop. eastbound carriageway diagonally.

Figure 4: Six design options taken forward to detailed evaluation

4. OPTION SELECTION AND PUBLIC PREFERENCE SURVEY

From the six design options described above, the preferred option would be chosen using a rigorous
and detailed option selection process based on four assessment criteria:

• Viability to realize (capital costs, safety during consideration, environmental impact);

• Viability to operate (inspection and maintenance, security/safety/emergency access);

• Aesthetics and enhancement to Tsueng Kwan O; and

• Public Perception
For the first two evaluation criteria, viability to realize and viability to operate, there was generally
little to differentiate the options since the initial screening exercise described in Section 3 had
ensured that all six design options were reasonable engineering solutions. Though some of the
options have a higher capital cost, the variance in the overall project cost is within 10% and
considered within the acceptable limit.

Based on the evaluation criteria listed in the Structure Design Manual for Highways and Railways
of Hong Kong (Highways Department, 2006), the project teams’ assessment of the aesthetics, and

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supported by the Advisory Committee on the Appearance of Bridges and Associated Structures
(ACABAS), concluded that the two arch options had better aesthetics than the four cable-stayed
options. The curved form of the arches was more in sympathy and harmony with the natural setting
of the bridge in the local Junk Bay environment.

A public preference survey was carried out in March 2010, open to all residents of Hong Kong, but
specifically targeting the local community in TKO. The members of Sai Kung District Council,
where TKO belongs to, were also invited to give their rating on each of the six design options.

The public preference survey form included

information on the options and allowed the
public to nominate their preferred option or
options, as they were permitted to vote for as
many of the options as they liked. Of the 3,047
forms received from the public, a total of 3,692
votes were cast.

The two arch bridges gained 60% of the total

vote (Figure 5). This preference towards arches
has been found in previous public surveys Figure 5: Public preference survey results
conducted overseas (e.g. Gottemoeller 1998) and is consistent with the common view that bridges
with curved elements are more appealing than bridges formed of straight lines (Transportation
Research Board 1991). For Hong Kong in particular, one might speculate that the prevalence of
existing major cable stayed bridges has led to the desire to see something new and different since to
date no major arch bridges have been constructed.

Overall, the Eternity Arch was the most popular with 36% of the overall votes compared to
The Gateway with 24% of the votes. The most popular cable-stayed option, the Bow, gained only
13% of the votes. In the Sai Kung District Council rating, the results from the 26 responding
councilors were consistent with the views of the general public. The Eternity Arch obtained the
highest average score of 4.2 out of the 5 point scoring system. The second best option is the
Gateway with a score of 3.2. The scores of the four cable-stayed bridge options ranged from 2.2
to 2.8. The public preference survey and Sai Kung District Council rating indicates that the
community desire is for a simple and elegant solution that will be aesthetically pleasing without
being dominant. In particular, concerns had been raised by the public and councilors on the height
of the structure and whether it would dominate the landscape. Within the information presented to
the public was a scale figure showing the size of each bridge in comparison to the mountain range
to the east of the town and a nearby housing development (Figure 6). The Eternity Arch is clearly
lower than the Gateway Arch and this may have been significant in explaining the survey result.

Given the clear preference towards the Eternity Arch, the public survey became one of the most
decisive factors in selecting it as the preferred option as the other assessment criteria gave no

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significant differences. From this respect, the survey was a very successful exercise in building a
consensus of opinion amongst the project promoters.

Figure 6: Height comparison presented to the public

5. PRELIMINARY DESIGN
After technical assessment and consideration of the public preference, the Eternity Arch has been
chosen as the preferred option (Figure 7) for preliminary design considering the following factors:

• The bridge has an elegant quality with an appropriate scale for the location.

• Overwhelming support by the public and the district council for this option.

• The arch can be prefabricated off-site, which has cost, health and safety, and environmental
benefits.

Figure 7: Eternity Arch general arrangement (subject to prelininary design modifications)

The Eternity Arch is a bowstring arch with the deck acting as a tie against the thrust of the arch. An
all steel orthotropic box girder deck was chosen to reduce the weight of the deck, which reduces the
size of the structural members and also improves transport and lifting during construction.

The inclined arch is made of stiffened steel plates made up into a box section with internal access.
Hangers have been placed at relatively close centers (10m) in order to minimise the stresses due to
the curvature in the arch between the hanger locations.

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An end view of the arch reveals an important feature that the
hangers are inclined slightly out of the plane of the arch
(Figure 8). For inclined arches the action of its own self
weight will result in transverse bending, however by bringing
the hangers inboard slightly it has been possible to offset this
effect.

The main bridge piers are of concrete construction to improve

durability in the corrosive marine environment. Since the arch
is tied at deck level, the primary action on the piers are vertical
loads, which results in significant bending of the inclined piers.
Prestressing will be introduced into the piers to counter the Figure 8: End view
creep effects which would otherwise lead to long term deflections, reduce cracking and improve
durability, and achieve a more slender pier form. The lightweight steel deck is continuous into the
side spans to reduce the bending moments as well as move the expansion joint away from this
visual focal point.

6. CONCLUSIONS
The choice for the Eternity Arch was the result of positive collaboration between the general public,
public stakeholders, the client and the design team. In addition to an engineering solution, through
public engagement exercises it has been possible to develop a bridge that adds value to the
community and increases recreational opportunity. By allowing local residents to participate in the
development and evaluation of the bridge design, it is possible to solicit public support and give
them a sense of ownership of the project. The selected form is an elegant structure meeting all of
the technical requirements and bringing to TKO the first major arch bridge in Hong Kong.

At the time of writing, the public engagement process is entering its third phase whereby
exhibitions are planned to present the preferred option to the public.

7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors would like to acknowledge the Director of Civil Engineering and Development for
permission to publish this paper. However, the views expressed are those of the authors and do not
necessarily reflect in any way the official views or policy of the Hong Kong SAR Government.

REFERENCES
Gottemoeller, F (1998), Bridgescape: The Art of Designing Bridges. New York: John Wiley & Sons
Highways Department (2006), Structures Design Manual for Highways and Railways, Third Edition, The Government
of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
Maunsell (2005), Further Development of Tseung Kuan O, Feasibility Study, Executive Summary, Environmental
Impact Assessment and Traffic Impact Assessment
Transportation Research Board (1991), Bridge Aesthetics around the World, p169 -p172