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Crowds gather to purchase high-speed rail tickets in person on Friday. Photo: K. Y. Cheng

MTR Corp vows to work with mainland Chinese counterparts after Hongkongers left waiting hours for high-speed rail ticket authentication

  • Some complain of lengthy delays for mobile or email verification from service’s official website
  • Jeny Yeung, MTR Corp’s transport services director, says rail giant will refer bugs to website operator China Railway
The MTR Corporation has pledged to work with its mainland Chinese counterparts after Hong Kong residents complained of lengthy delays and errors in authenticating their bookings for the high-speed rail service over the border.

Ticketing was in the spotlight again on Friday after hundreds of travellers the day before lined up at the terminus in West Kowloon for train tickets ahead of Sunday’s resumption of the service.

Jeny Yeung Mei-chun, the MTR Corp’s transport services director, told a radio programme some travellers had complained about delays in authenticating bookings on China Railway’s website.

“It should take just a few minutes to buy a ticket online, but we have heard of cases in which people could not receive the authentication code, and some took a long time to get it,” she said. “We are learning about the situation and will refer this to the operator.”

Hongkongers rush to buy high-speed rail tickets to mainland ahead of service launch

Yeung said about 3,000 out of the 5,000 tickets available daily for northbound trains had been sold as of Thursday.

She encouraged residents to authenticate their identity with their mobile phone number, instead of an email address, as the code could not be delivered to certain providers. The company would follow up on the delays with China Railway, she added.

Screens at the West Kowloon terminus displayed real-time ticket availability, including vacancies for the coming two weeks, she noted.

On Friday afternoon, more than 100 people, mostly elderly, were lined up for tickets at the station. Some said they had earlier encountered the authentication issue.

Traveller Destiny Ou spent two hours in the queue before being able to buy tickets to Shenzhen departing next Thursday, two days before Lunar New Year.

Hong Kong MTR’s cross-border through-train service ‘effectively cancelled’

The 14-year-old student rushed to the terminus after her authentication on 12306, the official booking website, failed.

“I read online that only 25 per cent of all tickets are sold online, and more are available at the terminus, so I came over here in person,” she said. She ended up buying tickets for herself and her family to travel to their hometown of Shaoxing via Shenzhen North.

A 26-year-old financial services worker said he was in line to help his supervisor buy tickets to the mainland before Lunar New Year. He went to the station in the afternoon after encountering multiple authentication problems with the 12306 platform.

Some who came to purchase tickets in person on Friday said they encountered issues with the online booking platform. Photo: K. Y. Cheng

“The system is very unfriendly to Hongkongers. I registered for an account with my Hong Kong mobile phone number, but they said I needed to send a text to a mainland phone number to verify my identity. I don’t have a mainland phone number, and I don’t want to send an international text. It’s so frustrating,” he said.

The 26km-long (16 miles) city section of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link was in service for about 16 months before it closed in late January 2020 because of the pandemic. The trains ran from the West Kowloon terminus through to Shenzhen and south Guangzhou.

Once services resume over the weekend, nearly 80 trains – 39 heading to the mainland and 38 to Hong Kong – will be travelling along the line daily, with a recently built route offering new stops at Dongguan, Dongguan South and Guangzhou East, in addition to the existing ones along the line to Guangzhou South.

Outbound passengers must provide a negative result for a Covid-19 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test taken within 48 hours of departure, and complete the mainland’s health declaration form. Passengers must also wear a mask at all times, but flammable disinfectants such as hand sanitiser are not allowed.

The MTR Corp’s train services within Hong Kong will run overnight through Lunar New Year’s Eve on January 21.

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