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Impacts on Urban Development7.3.28 The introduction of a new railway can lead to city centre development which couldnot otherwise occur through lack of transport capacity. For'"example, it "is clMbtfOlwhether the expansion of Central District over the past few years could have beensupported without the presence of the Mass Transit Railway and serious questionsmust be raised about the extent of future development on planned reclamationswithout new rail access.7.3.29 New and improved rail lines can undoubtedly spur the development of ...newcommunities in the New Territories by making them more attractive places to,live.'-However, by Integrating the new towns "into the main urban transport system, thechances of developing the new towns as self-contained communities away from theexisting urban centres will be weakened.7.3.30 Development impacts are clearly important and it is desirable that the decision toconstruct a rail project be integrated with the planning and developmentof , r citycentres and new communities.Uncertainty of Future Development7.3.31 The Study used a set of population and employment projections by region formaking traffic forecasts. These were made considering plans for new developmentareas, both in the New Territories and in the urban area. Development plans havechanged substantially in the past even during the course of this Study, and it mustbe expected that they will change again in the future as investigations of developmentpotentials continue. Therefore, it is important to assess the impact of assumptions onnew developments on the outcome of the project evaluations and thus identify thedegree of certainty attached to the evaluation results.Protection from Congestion7.3.32 Without in the least detracting from the efforts to control the growth of trafficcongestion, it must be recognised that this is going to be an increasingly difficulttask over the coming years if the prosperity of the Territory and resulting transportexpectations of the population continue to rise. New rail lines in the urban area offerthe prospect of acceptable travel conditions even when traffic jams block the roads;to this extent, expensive rail lines and unpopular traffic restraint measures can beconsidered as parallel approaches to the urban traffic problem.Implementation Capability7.3.33 The implementation of a complex rail project is a sophisticated exercise and thesuccess of rail projects in some communities has been undermined by basic inabilityto carry through the project to a sound overall plan and time scale. However, HongKong has demonstrated the ability to implement major railway projects to the extentof being counted as a world leader in this field. This is therefore not an issue inHong Kong.7.4 Candidate Railway Projects7.4.1 The new rail projects evaluated by CTS-2 are shown in Figure 7.3. They wereconceived with a variety of different objectives. Some would provide links to theremaining major existing or planned population centres not yet connected to the railsystem. These include the lines to Junk Bay, Tuen Mun, Yuen Long/Tin Shui Wai,IVIa On Shan and Aberdeen. Other lines would provide additional rail capacity forcertain critical rail corridors. These include the urban area cross-harbour links, theKCR main line extension to Tssm Sha Tsui and Sheung Wan, and the Diamond Hillto Sha Tin light rail line.126