Ticketing To Return For Some Licence Office Services

The Transport Department said on Thursday that it will bring back a ticketing system for selected services at its licensing offices in a month's time, a day after the Audit Commission urged officials to relieve overcrowding in them.

The announcement was made by Transport Commissioner Rosanna Law on an RTHK programme.

The Department had decided to drop ticketing after two trial runs in 2015 and 2016, citing the complexity of the system.

But Law said another trial run will soon be launched for people renewing their driving licences, and there will be a full launch at all four licensing offices if everything goes smoothly.

"It's like getting a ticket when you go to yum cha. If you see there's a long wait after you get the ticket, then you can come back later, and don't have to stand in line. It's easy to handle the situation with driving licence renewals," she said.

"But usually, many of those who queue up are agents...and they have 10 or even 100 applications. If we allow one agent to get 100 tickets, then there aren't any tickets left for others... So there are these operational issues."

Law said the industry would also oppose a one-ticket-per-person rule, as hundreds of agents would have to head to the licensing offices to handle vehicle-related applications.

The transport commissioner said the rolling out of digital licences would solve many of these problems in the long run, and officials will brief the Legislative Council's transport panel on the matter next month.

She added that the department is working hard to clear a backlog of applications that have accumulated due to Covid service disruptions.

This has now been reduced to around 7,000 to 8,000 applications from 35,000 at the peak of the backlog, she said.