Is 1½-hour train trip to Guangzhou ‘high-speed’? Hong Kong lawmakers question new line’s slow service, empty seats
- Trip to newly added stop Guangzhou East takes 1½ hours on trains departing from West Kowloon terminus, while old service from Hung Hom took 2 hours
- Lengthy commute does not fit ‘definition of high-speed rail,’ lawmaker and former railway boss Michael Tien says
A Hong Kong lawmaker has said a new train line connecting Hong Kong and Guangzhou East does not fit the “definition of high-speed rail” as the service is hamstrung by old tracks and intermediate stops, while another notes mismatched ticket allocation and empty seats.
Sunday’s 8am departure for Guangzhou East – a newly added but historically popular stop just a stone’s throw from the city’s financial and commercial centre – marked the initial stage in reconnecting Hong Kong to the mainland’s sprawling rail network.
Among the first batch of passengers was Bosco Xia, a 25-year-old research assistant who was travelling to see his former schoolmates at Guangzhou. “I have not been back [to mainland China] for more than 500 days. It feels good to be able to go home,” he said.
The Jiangsu native said he chose Guangzhou East instead of Guangzhou South because it was much closer to the shopping districts, and he wanted to give the inaugural service a try.
Railway enthusiast Anthony Sze, an 18-year-old student, was also on the train attempting to record the entirety of the trip on his DSLR camera, but to no avail as it overheated filming the lengthy journey.
“[This train for] Guangzhou East is special because it is the first one,” he said, adding that one “flaw” of the maiden high-speed rail journey was that it slowed down at several points.
Only half of the route ran on tracks equipped for high speeds, with the train slowing down to 160km/h when it switched rails shared with intercity transport just north of the Dongguan South station.
On dedicated tracks, such as those between West Kowloon and Guangzhou South, the high-speed train can reach 300km/h and complete the journey in 46 minutes.
In comparison, a train ride from Hong Kong’s terminus to Guangzhou East can take more than 97 minutes. A journey on the old intercity through-train service from Hung Hom to the same stop took about two hours, without including customs clearance.
Lawmaker and former railway boss Michael Tien Puk-sun, who also travelled on the Sunday morning train, said Hong Kong’s sole rail provider should reduce the journey time to Guangzhou East.
“I don’t think 1½ hours fits the definition of high-speed rail. I’ve urged the MTR Corporation to cut it to one hour,” he said, adding that removing intermediate stops could save time.
The station previously formed part of Hong Kong’s more than 110-year-old intercity train service, which Tien said he believed would be permanently retired after it was suspended three years ago as a result of the pandemic.
Hong Kong’s high-speed rail link resumes service after 3 year of Covid curbs
The intercity service used to operate between Hong Kong’s Hung Hom station and the Guangzhou East stop – a traditionally popular option for business travellers due to its proximity to the Tianhe business district and the long-established Canton Fair trade show venue in Pazhou.
A Post reporter boarding the eight-car high-speed train on Sunday morning observed it left the West Kowloon terminus with an occupancy rate of just 10 per cent.
However, tickets for the train were listed as “sold out” both online and at the terminus.
Tien attributed that to an uneven distribution of tickets for sale between the West Kowloon terminus, the mainland’s official website and other means.
He said that out of the 600 seats on the northbound Guangzhou East train, the West Kowloon terminus was allocated 120 spots, while the rest were shared among other platforms. Therefore, he said, many Hong Kong residents were not able to buy a ticket from the terminus while not many other passengers got on board in Shenzhen or elsewhere along the line.
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“What the Hong Kong government should do now is to learn from the lesson by revamping the allocation arrangements,” Tien said.
Lawmaker and former MTR Corp engineer Gary Zhang Xinyu said he also noticed there was a mismatch between electronic tickets available for sale and the capacity of the trains.
“Only 6,500 passengers took the trains on Sunday, but the overall capacity of the 77 trains was about 50,000 people. There is a serious mismatch on ticketing arrangements,” he said.
Zhang finally had to queue up to buy tickets at the West Kowloon terminus after he spent two hours opening an account on 12306, the official website for the service operated by China Railway, before discovering all online ones had been sold.
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Despite the new arrival of high-speed trains at Guangzhou East, no visible modifications were seen at the station. But passengers who frequented it before the border closure would quickly feel the difference.
Passengers no longer need to pass through customs clearance at the station on the mainland side, as they did for a train departing from Hung Hom in pre-pandemic times.
Customs clearance is now done at the West Kowloon terminus, which houses the mainland and Hong Kong control points under one roof as part of measures to shave time off the trip.
The return train that left Guangzhou East at 2.25pm was also noticeably more packed than the early morning departure. According to a Post reporter on board, carriages were around a third full by the time it reached West Kowloon, with suitcases lining the aisles.
