Introduction
The Public Records Office (PRO) of the Government Records Service, served as the designated government archives, is committed to acquiring and appraising records and materials of enduring value and making them available for public access. In 2001, the PRO received 207 records on traffic survey transferred from the Transport Department and grouped them in the series of Traffic Survey Files under Hong Kong Record Series 1015. Most of these records were created in the 1970s by the Traffic and Transport Survey Division of the then Public Works Department, documenting the study of different bus routes conducted at that time. Photographs in these reports not only marked the locations of bus stops, they also documented nearby buildings, streetscapes and people’s everyday life. The distinctive scenes of each bus stop made up a collage of the cityscape and kept an account of the city’s life back in the 70s of the last century. These reports are valuable information for the study of Hong Kong’s transport development and changes of our cityscape.
Photographs of bus stops along the coast of Hong Kong Island from the above Hong Kong Record Series are selected for display in the “Great scenery along the way: Exhibition of street scenes at bus stops on Hong Kong Island in the 1970s”. Through these photographs, we can appreciate not only the scenes of Hong Kong Island where these bus routes travelled in the 1970s, but also the characteristics of different districts.
