Hong Kong’s round in the Formula E canceled by local bureaucracy

There was a little bit of difference between the original calendar announced by Formula E, and the most recent calendar. Namely: Hong Kong was not to have a Formula E date, and was replaced by a date in Rio de Janeiro.

When the calendar was announced, I went “ho hum” because whatever places they (Formula E) choose for their races is up to them. But a reporter for China Daily was not satisfied with that, and dug into why Formula E was not coming to the place where he lived.

The reason he came up with is government bureaucrats afraid the Formula E race would block access to the Government Secretariat and PLA building.

A track built on Lung Wo Road was preferred, because it would have been a better track. However that route was rejected by the government for the aforementioned reason. Instead a track in the Central Harborfront area was chosen, but ultimately rejected by the FIA after 10 redesigns.

What the China Daily reporter wrote is:

The principal reason for this is bureaucracy. Any proposals, whether urgent or not, or however beneficial to Hong Kong, are required to undergo all sorts of departmental examinations and approval – usually without exception. Because of the deteriorating political environment, different departments want to avoid criticism by taking on less projects. As a result, the government is not flexible enough to host events like Formula E.

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David Herron is a writer and software engineer living in Silicon Valley. He primarily writes about electric vehicles, clean energy systems, climate change, peak oil and related issues. When not writing he indulges in software projects and is sometimes employed as a software engineer. David has written for sites like PlugInCars and TorqueNews, and worked for companies like Sun Microsystems and Yahoo.