confusion

Until last Friday, I hadn’t ridden the final frontier since last December, and since my last ride, there has been a major change in the road markings on Lin Ma Hang Road at the junction with the only way by road into the village of Tsung Yuen Ha, although I should qualify that statement. The ride enters the village via the corpse road, for which you would need a four-wheel-drive vehicle—or a mountain bike—and leaves via a Drainage Services access road that is a dead end for motor vehicles. However, for someone on a bike, there is a footbridge over a storm drain that provides access to a short narrow path leading to the narrow road into the village of Heung Yuen Wai (which I wrote about in Disappearing World #3).

Turning right here leads only to the village and is otherwise a dead end. However, if you turn left, you will reach Lin Ma Hang Road within a short distance. At this point, Lin Ma Hang Road is a single-track road that carries very little traffic, but within 400 metres, it widens into a regular two-way road. That never used to be a problem, but on Friday, this is what confronted me:

I always used to simply keep left—I don’t think this was originally a ‘passing place’—but notice the arrow directing vehicles to the right (in case you’re also confused at this point, don’t forget that we drive on the left in Hong Kong—a legacy of British rule).

This photo shows a second arrow pointing right and provides a look at what lies beyond:

The give-way lines for the road coming in from the left extend into the carriageway, and together with the hashed area mean that I’m supposed to keep right. Of course, I didn’t see the one-way signs until I examined the photos, because they aren’t very obvious, but I thought: what about traffic coming in the opposite direction?

What isn’t obvious from the photos is that the road from the left is part of a parallel road about 50 metres in length that houses the terminus of a bus route that I believe operates only on Sundays and public holidays, and that includes the junction with the road into Tsung Yuen Ha. I might have continued to be confused by the road markings, but while I was taking the photos, a fire engine appeared from the left—a large hill fire had broken out somewhere behind us, which we’d noticed before reaching Lin Ma Hang Road. Apparently, it was directed to turn right into the parallel road before re-emerging onto the main road.

This doesn’t make any sense. Why not simply maintain two-way traffic on the main road and leave the parallel road, which isn’t new, only for vehicles that need to use it? Almost nothing surprises me after spending so many years in Hong Kong, but the chaos that could be created by these bizarre road markings comes very close.

Incidentally, the fence alongside the road, which you can see in both photos on the far side of the road, is the frontier between Hong Kong and China, and the odd layered building is therefore in Shenzhen.