HK$78m plan to build lifts in 4 MTR stations
Four of the busiest MTR stations will be equipped with lifts in the next three years in a HK$78 million project to provide easier access for disabled commuters.
The lifts will be fitted at one exit at each of the four stations - Tsim Sha Tsui, Jordan, Yau Ma Tei and Sham Shui Po.
The Kowloon Park exit at Tsim Sha Tsui station - a popular meeting point at the corner of Nathan Road and Haiphong Road - will undergo the most radical change as the concrete structure will be replaced by a glass one.
The MTR Corporation said the busy exit would remain open during the work, via a temporary exit of the same size.
The Sham Shui Po station exit at Fuk Wah Street will not be affected by the work there.
But commuters should be prepared for some inconvenience when work begins next year at the Jordan and Yau Ma Tei stations.
Jordan exit B1, opposite the Yue Wah Department Store, and Yau Ma Tei exit D onto Waterloo Road will both be closed for 18 months.
The installations are expected to be finished by 2011, except the one at Tsim Sha Tsui, which will take an extra two years as the work will go hand in hand with another project at the station. That project will add a tunnel and five new exits at the Mira hotel (formerly known as the Hotel Miramar), Park Lane Shopper's Boulevard and Granville Road.
The work would leave 13 stations - including the key interchanges at Admiralty and Prince Edward - still without lifts but they all contain at least one barrier-free access for the disabled, the MTR Corp said.
The firm's head of operations engineering, Jacob Kam, said the MTR Corp aimed to build at least one lift for every station.
'The difficulties in altering an existing station are just as much as building a new one,' he said. 'We have to find space in an often congested urban environment, and there are also pipe works and cable systems that must be avoided.'
The corporation has spent more than HK$400 million in the past decade on improving station and train facilities, including retrofitting of ramps and stair lifts at station exits, and will spend a further HK$100 million in the next five years for the same purpose.
