Details Of HK$1bn Smart Traffic Fund Revealed

The government will start accepting applications under its billion-dollar Smart Traffic Fund from the end of this month, with officials saying they are expecting to fund projects that aim to improve road safety and efficiency, as well as enhance convenience for motorists.

"For example, to enhance the commuting convenience of the public, the applicants can perhaps carry out big-data analysis related to traffic data to correlate the relationship between congestion, traffic speed and weather and also investigate the cause of accidents," said an assistant commissioner for transport, Michael Law.

"Perhaps the applicants can explore the connected vehicle technology, so that perhaps the cars can talk to themselves to notify the motorists that there is a car in the vicinity or even there are pedestrians in the vicinity to alert the drivers – these are the projects that can improve road safety," he added.

The fund is open for applications from March 31, and they can be made at any time over the next five years.

Research and application projects can get as much as HK$20 million from the fund, while pure research projects will be limited to HK$8 million per project.

The assistant transport chief said it will fund up to 90 percent of a project's total cost from the public sector, and up to 50 percent for projects from the corporate sector.

Once an application is made, it will be screened and assessed before an initial payment is made.

Meanwhile, the projects will also be subject to interim assessments before the rest of the money is paid out.

"We expect that once the applicant has submitted all the required documents and clarified their application to us, then we can perhaps approve the application within three months at the earliest," Law said, adding that the duration of these projects should not normally exceed two years.