Hong Kong MTR threatened with sanctions over signalling debacle, as government bemoans more potential delays for mega rail project

Government lays out ‘grave disappointment’ over signalling saga and associated delays after MTR Corp panel finds staff failures

Unresolved route-setting problems led to system upgrade being aborted on eve of its launch last September

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The MTR Corporation has found flaws in the response of its staff to a signalling problem. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 4:18pm, 1 Feb 2021Updated: 12:13am, 2 Feb 2021

Hong Kong officials have threatened the MTR Corporation with sanctions for a signalling blunder that forced the eleventh-hour suspension of a major system upgrade, expressing their “grave disappointment” atpotential further delays to the city’s costliest-ever rail project.

The government issued its rebuke on Monday after an MTR Corp investigation panel found that staff had made an error of judgment by failing to push contractors to fully probe the causes of the signalling problems.

The findings triggered yet another admission from the rail operator of fresh delays to the Sha Tin-Central link, which has already racked up a price tag of HK$90.7 billion (US$11.7 billion) after suffering repeated hold ups and cost overruns.

MTR Corp investigators said the issue on the East Rail line on September 11 last year – discovered ahead of the launch of a system upgrade – was a reliability matter rather than a safety one.

The investigation panel, chaired by engineer Edmund Leung Kwong-ho, found the team was not sensitive enough to the potential impact on services and did not secure from contractor Siemens a more detailed analysis of what went wrong.

Leung attributed the malfunction to a new piece of since-abandoned software for monitoring train movements. The route-setting problem that was unearthed might have caused a train to deviate from its intended course and head to a wrong station, prompting the MTR Corp to suspend the September 12 launch of the new signalling system.

With the report now released, the start date for the signalling upgrade to allow for a new length of rolling stock has been rescheduled for February 6.