Hong Kong rail chiefs admit high-speed rail link to mainland China will not always be as quick as they claimed
Estimated time for trips from the city to Guangzhou does not apply to services stopping at stations along the line
Hong Kong rail bosses admitted on Monday that some journeys on the city’s new high-speed rail line to Guangzhou would take longer than the promised 48 minutes, after reports they could overshoot that by as much as half an hour.
The MTR Corporation’s chief of operations, Francis Li Shing-kee, said the shorter time only applied to direct trains and that any train stopping at one or all of the three stations between the city’s West Kowloon station and Guangzhou South – Futian, Shenzhenbei and Humen – would take longer.
Mainland Chinese media reported that during the recent trials of the HK$84.4 billion (US$10.7 billion) link, set to open to the public in the third quarter of the year, the journey took one hour and 18 minutes.
On Monday, Li said the needs of people using the intervening stations trumped the need to keep travel times low.
“We need to take care of passengers’ actual needs,” he explained. “If a train stops at one or two stations and takes one or two more minutes, which provides greater convenience for passengers, do we still need to haggle over these longer journeys taking one or two more minutes?”