The new system that is being tried out on route 263, which has been running between Tuen Mun and Sha Tin since the end of October, allows passengers to pay at a designated payment area set up at the Tuen Mun Road bus interchange (Kowloon bound) in the morning between 7 am and 9 am.

Passengers can pay for the bus fare with their Octopus cards or by other electronic methods before queuing and boarding a bus.

KMB said the "pay before boarding" arrangement ran smoothly in the first month, and the buses saved 12 seconds in the process.

It said the arrangement has saved a total of one hour and 16 minutes each morning for the 380 buses passing through the interchange during the peak hours on working days.

Assuming each bus carries 80 passengers, the new arrangement can save 4.2 days in total for all passengers taking that route in the morning daily.

KMB assistant operations director (division 2) Kelvin Yeung said that the new arrangement has generated a chain reaction and shortened boarding times for passengers at other bus stops within the interchange.

We have noticed that "passengers sometimes find that their Octopus Cards do not have sufficient balance," and that takes up time, Yeung said. "The new arrangement can avoid such a situation happening."

Meanwhile, Transport Advisory Committee chairman Stephen Cheung Yan-leung said authorities can plan for a fourth cross-harbor tunnel in the long run, following the latest proposals for toll adjustments that will see Western Harbour Crossing journey costs go down to HK$60 and Eastern and Hung Hom crossings go up to HK$30 from next August.

Cheung said that the number of vehicular harbor crossings have increased 10 percent to 60 percent, which translates to around 6,000 people who use the tunnels each hour during peak periods.

He said besides congestion in the tunnels, connecting roads are also affected and as such, authorities must rationalize the traffic in the tunnels as well as in nearby roads.