When Hong Kong’s Kowloon Tong interchange was finished in 1982, linking the city’s rail network with the main line to China

On October 6, 1975, the South China Morning Post reported that “the Government is expected to give the Kowloon-Canton Railway an opportunity to investigate a proposal to build an interchange station above the Mass Transit Railway’s Kowloon Tong underground station”.

“The General Manager of the KCR, Mr Reginald Gregory, yesterday said the question is how to integrate the two stations effectively so that they will prove attractive to users of both systems. He said the MTR is ‘quite interested’ in the proposal which needs to be further investigated to determine the number of people that will use the interchange facilities. ‘The project will be self-liquidating and won’t be too expensive. But if it materialises, it will encourage the use of public transport by the people.’”

Five years later, on June 9, 1980, the Post reported that “the Public Works Department is inviting tenders for four subcontracts to the main contract for the Kowloon-Canton Railway/Mass Transit Railway interchange at Kowloon Tong. They are for the installation of electrics, air-conditioning, fire equipment and lifts.”

On April 8, 1982, the paper reported that there would be “major traffic disruption in the Kowloon Tong district in the next 30 months […] The opening of the Kowloon Tong KCR/MTR interchange and major roadworks at Waterloo Road beginning this summer are the reasons for the trouble”.

On May 5, a Post report headlined “KCR meets MTR as $75m interchange is finished” announced that the KCR interchange station at Kowloon Tong “will open on schedule tomorrow at the same time as electrified train services start, and within its budgeted cost of $75 million.