MTR rapped over late report of disruption
The MTR Corporation is under fire from the government for its late reporting of a service disruption at Yau Ma Tei station last month that affected about 100,000 commuters.
A power failure cut services between Yau Ma Tei and Jordan stations for three hours at peak time on October 21, causing chaos. Many commuters wanting to catch feeder buses said they did not know where to queue for them.
While the MTR Corp is supposed to inform the Transport Department of such incidents within eight minutes, it took 20 minutes to make the report that morning, the Transport Bureau said in a document submitted to the Legislative Council's railways subcommittee.
In a report to the panel, the MTR Corp said its staff believed they were dealing with a train fault that would cause delays of less than eight minutes. No call was made to the department because all of its operations control centre resources were focused on handling the incident.
The operator also said a smaller team was on duty before 7am.
It said dedicated staff had been assigned to communicate with the government in such a situation in future. The MTR Corp also said it would review its feeder bus service.
It was responding to bureau criticism of the timetabling, routes and operation of the feeder service. The bureau said accurate and full information should have been given to passengers and contingency arrangements put in place.
The MTR Corp said it would install a new digital system in stations next year to provide network updates in a clear visual format.
