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Alternative Scenarios for the Evaluation9.7.9 The need for controls on traffic growth will depend on the future development of theTerritory, it was therefore important to examine each policy package under somealternative scenarios of development. The two most critical factors were consideredto be:(1) The rate of growth of the economy of Hong Kong(2) The rate of construction of new highway infrastructure9.7.10 Economic Growth—The Study made assumptions about the growth of the economyas discussed in Chapter 4. It was noted there that due to the expected slowing downin the growth rate of the labour force, the assumed long term rate of growth in GDPof about 5% to 6% per year in real terms is low compared to the extraordinary rates ofgrowth actually achieved in Hong Kong since the 1960s. Average annual growthhas been about 8.5% for the last 25 years with a 10% annual growth over the lastthree years. While it is prudent to take a conservative view of economic growth inlong term planning, it would not be appropriate to ignore the traffic growthconsequences of achieving higher economic growth given the past record of HongKong. Hence the traffic and economic consequences of the policy packages arespelt out for both the Central forecast of economic growth and for a High forecast ofgrowth of 9% real GDP growth per year.9.7.11 Highway Construct/on—The Study recommends a programme of highwayconstruction which would greatly reduce traffic congestion in all parts of theTerritory. However, completion of this programme according to the planned schedulecannot be assured for several reasons:(1) There may be a time when other sectors of the economy are making increasingdemands on Government funding, for example health, environmentand education.(2) Some of the major projects require completion of massive land reclamations offWest Kowloon and off Central and Wan Chas on Hong Kong Island. Thetechnical feasibility and the timing of these reclamations are not yet certain.(3) A decision to remove the airport from Kai Tak to another site could absorb muchof the available resources of the construction industry as well as much of theavailable funding, to the extent that the CTS-2 recommended highway projects,which are not essential to the airport re-located situation, might have to bepostponed.9.7.12 Therefore the situation was examined for each policy package for two constructionscenarios, one with the full highway investment programme recommended byCTS-2 for completion in the mid-1990s, and the other assuming that only half of theprogramme is completed. Clearly, it is not known which projects might be delayedand where the impacts on traffic congestion would be felt. Therefore a simplisticapproach was adopted by taking a situation half way between the full highwaystrategy and that with only the completion of the currently committed highwayprogramme,The Reference Case: No Change in Current Policies9.7.13 The situation with no changes in current policies is examined first to provide areference basis for considering new policies. This is summarised in Table 9.1,comparing 1996 conditions with those prevailing in 1986 which is the base year forthe Study.9.7.14 Without any changes in policy, the vehicle fleet of private cars and goods vehicles isexpected to approximately double in the ten years to 1996. This represents a growthrate of between 6% and 7% per year. With high economic growth, the vehicle growthrate could increase to about 10% to 11% per year which corresponds to the early180