Ticket sales for Hong Kong’s high-speed railway off to bumpy start on first day of sale amid glitches in payment systems
Some had waited since Saturday morning for seats on trains to and from 30 mainland cities on the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link
The first buyers booked more than 6,450 tickets in advance for Hong Kong’s new high-speed rail service to mainland China on Monday, amid glitches which the operator played down as “teething problems”.
While the MTR Corporation did not evaluate how successful the opening sales had been on the Hong Kong side, critics said it was far below expectations for a much-vaunted cross-border service estimated to carry at least 80,000 passengers a day. But more tickets are expected to be sold over the next couple of weeks before trains start running on September 23.
More than 3,500 tickets were snapped up at the West Kowloon terminus by nearly 1,800 buyers, while the rest were purchased online and over the phone, the MTR Corp said.
More than 300 people were eagerly waiting in line when the new station opened at 8am, many of them having waited two days in advance, corralled by the rail operator into Austin MTR station, which is linked to the terminus by a footbridge.
The long-delayed and overbudget Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link will connect Hong Kong with 30 mainland Chinese cities. The 26km Hong Kong section was built at a cost of $84.4 billion (US$10.8 billion).
Tickets for the first train to Shenzhen North station at 7am were sold out by noon on Monday. By 5pm, some 60 per cent of tickets for the first train on September 23 to Hongqiao station in Shanghai had been sold.