Frustration for work-bound commuters

Workers had to wait up to an hour for buses in heavy traffic yesterday morning as Typhoon Usagi left the city.儲存One of the worst-hit areas was the Southern District, which does not have a railway service.Huge crowds appeared at the Lei Tung Estate bus terminus in Ap Lei Chau soon after the Observatory lowered the typhoon signal No8 to No3 at 9.20am.At 11.30am, there were still more than 80 people waiting for a bus to Central. Most of the other routes were back to normal.May Ip, who was at the front of the line, said she had been waiting for about an hour but there were no buses. The clerk was trying to get to work in Central before 11.20am.Ip said she was unhappy about the bus service but satisfied with warnings given by the Observatory. "It said early in the morning that the signal would be lowered before 10am, so I was well prepared," she said.But Phillip Sin, a shipping clerk who waited half an hour for a bus to Kwun Tong, said the Observatory should have been more specific about the time it would lower the signal.It was no less frustrating for workers trying to get to the city from across the harbour. In Lam Tin, passengers waiting at 10.20am迷你倉for cross-harbour buses to Hong Kong Island said about six buses had passed them in the preceding hour, but all were full.From 9.30am, hundreds of people lined the bus stops at the entrance to the Cross-Harbour Tunnel in Hung Hom, the queue snaking all the way back along the connecting footbridge and into the MTR station. The congestion did not ease until noon.Kong Bit-sing, 58, a construction worker, was one of those enduring a long wait for transport. He had been waiting for almost half an hour at the Hung Hom tunnel stop after taking a bus from his home in Shenzhen.He expected he would be waiting another 20 minutes at least – and joked it would be time for lunch when he arrived at Lei Tung Estate in Ap Lei Chau."I expected I'd be going to work today anyway," he said.New World First Bus and Citybus said services were basically back to normal by 9am, except for routes 9, H1 and H2, which were running again by the afternoon. All KMB routes resumed at 8am.A New World First Bus and Citybus spokeswoman said more services were added yesterday morning, with priority given to the busy routes, but there were still delays because of the congested roads.mini storage