October start for half-price student fares on all lines
The MTR Corp will extend half-price student fares to all its railways and buses starting in October for an indefinite period, but students who travel across the border in either direction are excluded from the deal.
During the promotion, eligible local students holding student-status Octopus cards will enjoy fare concessions of up to 50 per cent when they travel on MTR services.
The promotion covers the former Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation network, including East Rail, West Rail, Ma On Shan Line, Light Rail as well as MTR buses. It allows local students to travel to almost anywhere within Hong Kong by rail at a discount, but journeys ending at Lo Wu, Lok Ma Chau and on the Airport Express line are excluded.
The start date will be announced later and the MTR Corp did not say when the promotion would end when it made the announcement at its Kowloon Bay headquarters yesterday.
It came after Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen unveiled an HK$11 billion relief package at a Legislative Council question-and-answer session on Wednesday.
But Legco transport panel chairman Andrew Cheng Kar-foo said cross-border students should be treated equally. 'They should not divide the students into cross-border students and those in Hong Kong. Those cross-border students may come from grass-roots families.'
Legislator Lau Kong-wah, of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, echoed his views. 'I am pleased,' Mr Lau said. 'But it would be better to cover cross-border students as well.'
MTR Corp chief executive Chow Chung-kong said the corporation had listened to community views urging it to expand student fare concessions, and the promotion was expected to cost HK$130 million.
