Jay Walder: the man who set in train the high-speed rail link fiasco

When Jay Walder, the American chief executive of the MTR Corporation, vacates his post in summer next year, he would have presided over the Hong Kong railway system's most ambitious expansion in a decade.

Walder, 55, will leave the MTR Corp when his contract expires in August 2015. The father of three says his departure is solely because of family reasons. It has nothing to do with the recent barrage of public criticism and calls for him to quit over the two-year construction delay and costly budget overruns in the city's high-speed cross-border rail link project, he says.

The delay of the opening of the 26km Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link to 2017 has raised questions about the MTR's world-class reputation for reliability.

Housing and Transport Secretary Professor Anthony Cheung Bing-leung said he was going to warn legislators in November about the possibility of a delay, but was persuaded not to by Walder. The two-year delay was announced in April and Cheung's comments last week have led to claims of a cover-up.

The public was also earlier angered by "avoidable" faults with the railway system. In February, faulty insulators on overhead wires caused seven hours of delays over two days on the East Rail Line. In December, passengers on the Tseung Kwan O Line were forced to walk on the railway tracks through the tunnel back to the station when a train broke down after an overhead power cable came loose. The fault caused the network to be shut down for five hours.

The blame fell on Walder, as chief of the MTR Corp. But this was not the first time he has been faced with public anger over transport matters.

In his previous job as head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York between 2009 and 2011, he was also a lightning rod for commuters' anger after they were hit with double-digit fare increases and fewer bus and train services that led to overcrowded carriages.