Thousands of Easter holidaymakers heading to the mainland had to wait an hour for their trains to the Lowu border checkpoint yesterday morning.
Queues of people built up at KCR East Rail stations after the operator decided at 9.30am to impose a quota of 200 tickets for each Lowu-bound train. It was relaxed to 400 two hours later.
KCR East Rail spokeswoman Tracy Lai Ng Lai-kuen said that on average passengers had to queue for an hour to get trains to Lowu.
She said increasing the frequency of trains would not shorten the wait and might impose serious safety risks at the border checkpoint.
'The station there is already congested with people queuing to go through immigration and Customs on Hong Kong and Shenzhen sides. Allowing more people to go there may simply cause a collapse,' Miss Lai said.
New regulations were also implemented restricting the size of luggage to a maximum of 170cm in total dimensions.
